Outside Manchester Royal Infirmary, dozens of consultants had joined the picket line, taking part in a 96-hour strike organised after the health secretary refused an improvement on the 6% pay rise offered to NHS staff.
Dr Indy Kapila, an intensive care consultant at Manchester University NHS foundation trust and chair of the BMA regional consultant committee, said strike action was necessary due to the wage stagnation consultants have faced over the past decade and the “suboptimal” pay awards the government has offered since.
“The medical profession has faced an at least 35% erosion in pay since 2008. The recommendations by the independent pay review body have never been sufficient or adequate to stay in line with inflation – they’ve always made suboptimal recommendations, including the one made earlier this year at 6%,” he said.
“As a consequence, pay has eroded so significantly, and other conditions within the NHS have led to thousands of doctors leaving the NHS. This year alone we’ve got 8,500 vacancies for doctors.”
Kapila added that the below-inflation pay award offered was contributing to the lower standards of care within the NHS, as well as contributing to experienced consultants leaving the UK to work overseas.
“We’re seeing a drain of expertise from this country to other countries, and as a consequence the NHS is crumbling, patients are suffering – our ask is to restore pay to improve retention so we can support the NHS, look after patients better,” Kapila said. “Our focus is improving the lives of patients by improving the situation for the medical profession. We need to fix this problem urgently so the NHS can actually start improving, as the whole fabric of the NHS is crumbling.”
Dr Shanu Datta, a consultant psychiatrist in Preston and deputy chair of the BMA consultant committee, said consultants had decided to take strike action today with a “heavy heart”, adding that the decision was not taken lightly and was considered a last resort.
“This is genuinely not something that we ever expected we would have to do,” Datta said. “As it happens, I graduated just down the road from here over 30 years ago, and I never thought that I would find myself back here having to do what we’re doing today.
“We’re striking because we’ve seen an enormous erosion in our pay over the years, and what we’re saying now is that we would like the government to reverse their position, and ministers to come and talk to us so we won’t have to do this again. The 6% that has been offered represents another pay cut due to inflation. But we’re striking because our pay has not just been kept in line with inflation, it has also fallen behind the pay of other doctors in similar economies around the world.”
Datta added that the lack of in-line inflation pay offers played a part in the high levels of staff burnout within the NHS. “I speak as a consultant psychiatrist, and looking back over the past 10 years, I struggle to think of a time when my organisation was ever fully staffed with consultants,” Datta said. “This is because we are one of the most under doctored economies in the western world, and that inevitably has a bearing on staff morale. We are seeing colleagues with significant amounts of exhaustion and burnout.”
Rebecca Fish, a consultant colorectal and peritoneal surgeon at the Christie NHS foundation trust, said she saw strike action as necessary for protecting the future of the NHS and making the health service an institution that people would want to work for.
“For me, it’s about protecting the future of the NHS consultant workforce. The pay erosion that we’ve seen over the past decade, if that continues – and it will do if we continue to have under-inflation pay rises – we will be in a position where no one wants to do this job,” Fish said.
“The conditions that we work under have become increasingly tough coming out of the pandemic and the underfunding of the whole system has made me concerned about who’s going to look after me when I’m old if no one wants to be a consultant any more.”
