{"id":268692,"date":"2025-07-17T07:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T07:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/268692\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T07:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T07:09:09","slug":"resident-doctors-accused-of-greedy-pay-demands-before-streeting-talks-nhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/268692\/","title":{"rendered":"Resident doctors accused of \u2018greedy\u2019 pay demands before Streeting talks | NHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Resident doctors have been accused of being \u201cvery greedy\u201d over their 29% pay demand, before talks with Wes Streeting on Thursday and a planned five-day strike next week.<\/p>\n

The Guardian spoke to hospital trust bosses and senior medics, all of whom criticised the walkout in England and warned that it will cause \u201cabsolute chaos\u201d in the NHS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 29% pay claim is causing serious divisions and resentment among lower-paid frontline NHS staff, hospital chiefs said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an unnecessarily greedy ask in a [resource-]constrained system, that deprives patients and other staff directly,\u201d said one medical leader.<\/p>\n

They pointed to the 22% salary increase for 2023-24 and 2024-25 that the health secretary gave resident doctors in England last year soon after Labour won power.<\/p>\n

The medical leader added: \u201cOther staff groups let resident doctors get a big rise last year on the understanding that from this year all NHS staff would receive roughly the same increases.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut resident doctors tend to see themselves as the only people who work in healthcare and not as part of a health ecosystem. They don\u2019t seem to realise the tensions they are creating with their workmates. Their demands are very greedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Streeting will meet the co-chairs of the British Medical Association\u2019s resident doctors committee on Thursday in Westminster in the hope of making enough progress to avert the strike. It declined his request to meet the full committee.<\/p>\n

The BMA argues the 29% demand, spread over several years, is reasonable and affordable<\/a> for the NHS. However, the minister has refused to reopen this year\u2019s pay deal, which gave resident doctors a 5.4% rise, and called their 29% demand and looming stoppage \u201ccompletely unreasonable\u201d.<\/p>\n

One hospital trust chief executive said: \u201cNext week\u2019s strike will cause absolute chaos. We\u2019ve already got consultants stepping down to cover [resident doctors\u2019] rotas. It\u2019s a complete disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second trust boss said: \u201cI\u2019m dismayed at the latest industrial action. I think the doctors have completely misjudged the mood of the country on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third hospital leader said the BMA was wrong to threaten strikes in pursuit of its policy of \u201cfull pay restoration\u201d \u2013 getting the real-terms value of salaries back to 2008 levels.<\/p>\n

They said: \u201cThe resident doctors have had the best pay settlement of any staff group and the concept of pay restoration has no support outside the BMA ranks. It\u2019s not 2019. Asking for pay restoration when the economy is different comes across as naive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several polls have found that public support for strikes has collapsed<\/a> since resident doctors received their 22% rise last year. It has halved from 52% last year, when junior doctors staged 11 separate walkouts totalling 44 days under the Conservative government, to just 26% now, Ipsos found.<\/p>\n

The third chief executive added: \u201cThere was broad support for the last set of strikes. There\u2019s much less this time. The question is whether the BMA cares about public support. Their leaders and members are out of touch with public and NHS staff opinion. But they also hold a lot of cards.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times reported that five patients died as a result of disruption caused by junior doctors\u2019 strikes in 2023 and 2024, and the deaths were raised in prevention of future death reports issued by coroners to NHS bosses.<\/p>\n

Among them was a 71-year-old woman whose death from sepsis was found to be the result of neglect and \u201cmore likely than not because of industrial action by junior doctors\u201d and a 60-year-old man who died of multi-organ failure in late 2023. The coroner had written to NHS England warning that senior doctors were \u201cunable to maintain a consistent overview of patients\u201d due to the additional workload they were handling during the strikes.<\/p>\n

Hospital chiefs warned that renewed industrial action would scupper the NHS\u2019s efforts towards Keir Starmer\u2019s pledge to restore the 18-week maximum wait for planned hospital treatment by 2029.<\/p>\n

They said it would also undermine attempts to meet NHS England\u2019s demand for a \u201cfinancial reset\u201d \u2013 cutting billions in overspending this year \u2013 by forcing hospitals to pay consultants to cover rota gaps.<\/p>\n

Another senior doctor said: \u201cAn emerging bigger issue here is the greed of [resident] doctors hoovering up resources when other staff are much worse off. I think this tension will increase. All for one and none for all isn\u2019t a principle we can move forward on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BMA did not respond directly to the criticisms. A spokesperson said: \u201cIt is understandable that not everyone will be supportive of the proposed industrial action and people will voice opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is important to remember that strikes need not happen next week if the government can come forward with a plan to restore doctors\u2019 pay and rebuild the value of our workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Resident doctors have been accused of being \u201cvery greedy\u201d over their 29% pay demand, before talks with Wes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-268692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114867324153425112","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}