Junior doctors’ strike: can bitter row be solved?
Longest period of NHS industrial action begins with doctors demanding a 35% pay rise

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
The NHS is seeing its longest-ever period of industrial action with tens of thousands of junior doctors joining picket lines across England.
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are striking for three days in the “most extensive disruption for the NHS and patients since a wave of industrial action by healthcare workers began in December”, said the Financial Times.
But unlike strike action taken by nurses and ambulance workers, junior doctors have not agreed similar arrangements to maintain emergency and critical cover during walk-outs, leaving hospital chiefs “rushing to maintain services”, said the paper.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The walk-out comes after a ballot of junior doctors by the BMA last month, in which more than three-quarters of members participated, and in which 98% voted to strike and call for a 35% pay increase.
‘Make more serving coffee than serving patients’
On Saturday the BMA “rejected an eleventh-hour offer” from health secretary Steve Barclay to join “formal pay talks on the same basis other health unions accepted”, including calling off this week’s strike, said the FT.
The BMA has argued that junior doctors’ real-terms pay has been cut by 26% since 2008 despite increasing pressure on the profession and soaring waiting lists. The union launched a campaign over the weekend that claimed baristas at Pret a Manger made more per hour than a junior doctor. It said that while the sandwich chain will pay “up to £14.10 per hour” to its staff, a junior doctor “makes just £14.09”.
“Thanks to this government you can make more serving coffee than saving patients,” said the campaign. “This week junior doctors will take strike action so they are paid what they are worth.”
Almost a third of junior NHS doctors now say they are tempted by a move to Australia, which offers “fewer hours” and “50 per cent more pay” as well as “great coffee, great beaches and great weather”, said Dr Matt Morgan in The Spectator.
The NHS is already facing a shortfall of some 12,000 hospital doctors and 50,000 nurses. But “the good news” is that “the haemorrhage of staff can be treated”, said Morgan, as “few people really want to leave their home, their country and their family”.
Yet doctors need to feel “valued and supported by the system. It is imperative that the UK retains its doctors,” added Morgan. “Any health service is, after all, completely and utterly reliant on them.”
‘35% pay increase has raised eyebrows’
But in response to the campaign, government aides have argued that “the average junior doctor earned £55,436 in 2021-22, when counting payments for night and weekend shifts”, reported Politico. Indeed, the argument being put forward by the BMA is “more complicated than the ones put forward by most other unions” and has “raised eyebrows”, said the BBC.
That’s because “no junior doctor has seen pay cut by 26%” since 2008. “There are five core pay points in the junior doctor contract with each a springboard to the next. It means they move up the pay scale over time until they finish their training,” explained the BBC. A junior doctor in 2008 “may well be a consultant now, perhaps earning four times in cash terms what they were then”.
In its editorial today, The Telegraph said: “People may sympathise with the medics, who have seen their real incomes fall in recent years, but they are not alone in that.
“Many whose treatments will be postponed are in the same predicament and are often paid far less than doctors,” added the paper. It argued that the pay rise being sought by the BMA is “ludicrously high at a time when most are having to accept less than the inflation rate”.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.
-
What to know when filing a hurricane insurance claim
The Explainer A step-by-step to figure out what insurance will cover and what else you can do beyond filing a claim
By Becca Stanek Published
-
How fees impact your investment portfolio — and how to save on them
The Explainer Even seemingly small fees can take a big bite out of returns
By Becca Stanek Published
-
Enemy without
Cartoons
By The Week Staff Published
-
Rishi Sunak: will culture war win election?
Talking Point By fighting dirty, the Conservatives may succeed merely in driving a wedge between themselves and the electorate
By The Week Staff Published
-
Teflon Trump no longer: is the Georgia indictment different?
Talking Point A televised state trial with a long list of associates liable to ‘flip’ poses huge risks for the former president
By The Week Staff Published
-
Bibby Stockholm: the UK’s own Alcatraz?
Talking Point The controversial accommodation barge is the first secured by the government under its plan to cut the cost of housing asylum seekers
By Sorcha Bradley Published
-
Too close to the son: could Hunter Biden cost Joe the election?
Talking Point Analysts believe there may still be problems for the president even if he has broken no laws
By The Week Staff Published
-
Why life-threatening allergic reactions are on the rise
feature Allergy-related hospital admissions in England have more than doubled over the past 20 years
By Arion McNicoll Published
-
Rutherglen by-election: a pivotal moment for Labour in Scotland?
Talking Point The contest in Rutherglen and Hamilton West is being seen as a chance for the party to rebuild its Scottish credentials
By Arion McNicoll Published
-
Rishi Sunak’s drive to survive: are pro-car pledges a ‘vote magnet’?
Talking Point Conservative and Labour parties refocus on green policies following Uxbridge by-election
By Julia O'Driscoll Published
-
Rishi Sunak’s ‘rip-off’ uni crackdown: what makes a degree low value?
Talking Point New plans leave more questions than answers concerning the quality of institutions and the metrics involved
By Sorcha Bradley Published