The new Labour government has offered junior doctors in England a pay rise in a bid to end industrial action and “mark the start of a new relationship” with NHS staff.
But what pay rise are junior doctors asking for – and will they accept the latest deal?
FactCheck takes a look.
What pay rise have junior doctors been offered?
The government has offered junior doctors a pay rise deal of 22 per cent.
This will be spread over two years. Four per cent for 2023 (on top of an existing increase of between eight and 10 per cent) and a further pay rise of six per cent for 2024. This would be topped up by a £1,000 pay rise, which means this year’s pay rise would average an increase of over 8 per cent.
Junior doctors in England have taken industrial action 11 times since March 2023.
Addressing the Commons on 29 July, chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed industrial action in the NHS had cost taxpayers £1.7bn last year. This seems to be based on figures from the NHS England financial report. The Treasury said in its recent audit of public spending that it was funded by “a combination” of money redirected from other parts of the health and social care budget, as well as new cash from the Treasury.
Will junior doctors accept the pay rise offer?
The British Medical Association (BMA) is a union representing more than 190,000 doctors in the UK.
The BMA’s committee will “recommend” the government’s pay offer to its members, the Chancellor said.
Members will now have to vote on whether to approve the deal. Details of the vote will be “announced shortly”, the BMA said, adding that if junior doctors do agree to accept the offer, “the current dispute will be concluded and the mandate for strike action in England will end”.
But it’s possible members could reject the deal as the BMA has long campaigned for a bigger pay increase than the one currently on offer.
The union said last year that junior doctors’ pay in England had fallen by 26 per cent since 2008, once you account for inflation.
But as FactCheck reported at the time, the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank said a more accurate figure would be an 11 to 16 per cent fall since 2010.
The IFS and BMA reached different figures because they use different measures of inflation to calculate the “real terms” (i.e. inflation adjusted) change over time.
The BMA uses the Retail Prices Index (RPI), while the IFS uses the “Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs”, known as the CPIH.
The BMA told FactCheck at the time that it had chosen to use RPI because it tracks the costs doctors will experience in the real economy, such as housing costs, and because the government also uses RPI when charging junior doctors interest on student loans.
But the IFS told us that RPI was “widely acknowledged to be a flawed measure of inflation” and that the Office for National Statistics “ask[s] people not to use it for this reason”.
What about the rest of the UK?
In Scotland, junior doctors have not taken industrial action since they accepted a pay offer from the devolved government last year.
Meanwhile in Wales, junior doctors recently voted in favour of an improved pay deal.
In Northern Ireland, talks are ongoing and no strike action is currently planned.
(Image credit: Charlotte Coney/Story Picture Agency/Shutterstock)
