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Senior NHS doctors have offered to hold off from further strike action if ministers agree to meet for pay talks mediated by the conciliation body Acas, providing a glimmer of hope for resolving one of the most intractable pay disputes to have hit England’s public sector.
But an ally of Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said the government had made a pay award after accepting the recommendations of the independent pay review body, “and we are not reopening it”.
This week, both consultants and junior doctors represented by the British Medical Association are staging the latest in a series of three-day strikes that coincide with the Conservative party’s annual conference, leaving hospitals with only Christmas Day levels of staffing. Medics are planning a mass rally outside the conference centre in Manchester on Tuesday.
With more than 1mn appointments and procedures already cancelled since December as a result of NHS strikes, Barclay has publicly attacked senior doctors for choosing to take action, accusing them in an FT interview last week of withholding vital cancer treatment, despite earnings that put them “in the top 2 per cent of public sector pay”.
No direct talks have taken place between Barclay and the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, for more than six months, with the government stipulating that it would only enter negotiations if strikes were called off.
The BMA said on Tuesday that with no further action scheduled, its consultants’ committee had written to the prime minister offering to enter negotiations that could be facilitated by Acas if necessary. It added that it had also written to the conciliation service to formally request its involvement.
Its letter to Barclay said it would hold off calling any further strikes for four weeks to allow time for talks but would resume action if there were no “credible deal that we can put to our members by November 3”.
“If they fail to negotiate, we are not going anywhere,” said Vishal Sharma, chair of the BMA consultants’ committee.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it had repeatedly urged the BMA to put patients first and end “their hugely disruptive strikes immediately”.
“We’re giving doctors a fair and reasonable pay rise, as recommended by the independent pay review body, with doctors in training receiving an average increase of around 8.8 per cent — which is above what most in the public and private sectors are receiving — and consultants receiving a 6 per cent pay rise,” added the department.
Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents health organisations across England, described the overture as an “olive branch” that could serve as a first step towards ending the disruption caused by strikes.
“Something has to give. We can’t go into another ‘full on’ winter with the threat of more strikes hanging over the NHS,” he said, adding that industrial action made it “well-nigh impossible for the NHS to reduce growing waiting lists”.
However, the BMA made no mention of any offer to open talks with ministers over junior doctors’ pay — despite a similar suggestion of talks to be mediated by Acas earlier in the year.
The NHS Confederation, which represents health organisations across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said the BMA’s arbitration offer was “a positive step”, but leaders “will be keen for industrial action to be suspended for both consultants and junior doctors while Acas comes in to broker talks”.
Matthew Taylor, the confederation’s chief executive, said both sides in the dispute owed it to the public to resume talks “in the hope that they can agree a compromise before winter sets in”.
He added that if this did not happen “there needs to be honesty about how achievable the prime minister’s key pledge of reducing the size of the waiting list by March 2024 is”.
