Next week’s strike by junior doctors will lead to unprecedented “major disruption” of the NHS and affect thousands of patients’ care, the service’s top doctor warned on Saturday.
Many hospitals in England have already postponed outpatient appointments or non-urgent operations ahead of the stoppage on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
The walkout by 61,000 junior doctors will have a bigger impact than any of the strikes held since December by nurses, ambulance staff and physiotherapists, NHS England said.
“The action is expected to see some of the most severe strike disruption of NHS services to date and have a huge impact on the drive to reduce waiting lists for elective care,” it said.
The British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors’ union, has designed this first of a threatened series of strikes by junior doctors over pay to be as impactful as possible, as a warning shot to ministers.
It is seeking “full pay restoration” of the 26.2% fall in the real-terms value of trainee doctors’ pay it calculates they have experienced since 2008/09.
Newly qualified doctors start their careers in the NHS earning just £14 an hour, the co-chairs of the BMA’s junior doctors committee told Rishi Sunak in a letter last Wednesday. Campaigning junior doctors have been highlighting on social media that some baristas earn the same or more.
On Friday night Steve Barclay said he has written to junior doctors in the BMA inviting them to enter into pay talks after negotiations with other health unions.
The health secretary tweeted that he had contacted the trade union asking it to enter into “formal” discussions about pay, urging it to call off planned strikes. “I’ve written to @BMA_JuniorDocs inviting them for formal pay talks on the same basis other health unions accepted, including calling off next week’s strike,” he said. “Let’s have a constructive dialogue to make the NHS a better place to work and ensure we deliver the care patients need.”
The union responded that Barclay had not attended pay talks on Friday.
Prof Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s medical director, said the service had been working very hard to try to mitigate the impact of the 72-hour walkout.
But, he added: “While we are doing what we can to avoid having to reschedule appointments, there’s no doubt that disruption will be much more severe than before and patients who have been waiting for some time will face postponements across many treatment areas.”
During the strike, hospitals will use consultants to ensure that they continue to provide services involving potentially life-or-death care – such as A&E, critical care, maternity services and long waits for operations, including cancer surgery – as close to normally as possible.
Meanwhile, NHS bosses have warned Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, that it will remain “stuck in perpetual crisis management” unless he agrees to fund a massive expansion of homegrown doctors and nurses.
The NHS Confederation, which represents health service trusts, has written to Hunt asking him to rebut reports this week that the Treasury is seeking to water down targets in the forthcoming and long-awaited NHS workforce strategy.
The plan had aimed to train much larger numbers of health professionals to tackle the massive staff shortage facing the service, which has 124,000 vacancies.
As the chair of the Commons health select committee last year, Hunt – who was health secretary for six years – argued strongly for the Treasury to commit to publishing regular independent assessments of the number of staff the NHS needs and to expand training places to provide more recruits.
One senior NHS source said that, now he is chancellor, Hunt is arguing that the government should not agree to such commitments, which would cost billions of pounds a year to fulfil.
“He seems to think that any financial headroom he has should be used to pave the way for the Conservatives to offer tax cuts before the next election, and not to train more doctors, nurses and other NHS staff, which is different to what he said before,” said the official.
The confederation warns Hunt in its letter, which it has shared with the Guardian, that a failure to agree to binding targets for increased numbers of health professionals “will see the NHS continue to be understaffed, with all of the implications that brings for patient care, waiting times, the efficiency of services and for staff morale”.
Hunt is due to unveil his spring budget on 15 March.
