Mass National Health Service (NHS) strikes have resulted in 650 000 hospital cancellations and appointment postponements so far, with worse to come as Britain braces itself for the largest walkout ever by junior doctors in a five-day strike from 13-18 July.
And consultants, the most senior doctors in the NHS, are planning to stage industrial action a week later, on 20-21 July, where they will only provide scaled-back “Christmas day cover”.
The unprecedented walkouts – linked to salaries and workloads – from health service staff including nurses, junior doctors and ambulance workers, have had enormous consequences for patients, reports the Daily Mail.
The first strike by nurses started in mid-December, with emergency service workers, physiotherapists and other health staff following suit in subsequent weeks.
In March, junior doctors began the first in a wave of strikes, heaping further disruption on the struggling health service, which has just celebrated its 75th anniversary.
Some 648 000 appointments, procedures and operations have been rescheduled as a result of the strikes, with further cancellations being inevitable.
The British Medical Association has urged the government to enter talks using the conciliation service Acas, saying that a precondition to not get round the table when strikes are planned is a “completely artificial red line”.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay has said he was willing to give doctors a bigger pay rise but there needs to be “movement on both sides”. He also accused junior doctors of “suddenly” walking away from talks.
Talks with the BMA’s junior doctor committee broke down after the government’s pay offer of 5%. They are demanding full pay restoration to 2008 levels, which equates to a 35% rise from the last financial year.
“I don’t think a 35% pay demand, which they refuse to move away from, is reasonable, given the headwinds we face from inflation,” Barclay said.
NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said patients were “paying the price” for strikes.
“We’ve already had more than half a million appointments rescheduled because of industrial action.”
Some unions have settled the matter after the NHS Staff Council voted to accept the government’s revised pay offer for staff of the Agenda for Change contract – including paramedics, nurses and physiotherapists.
This means staff on the contract, which includes more than a million NHS workers, saw an increase at the end of June.
The new offer represented a 5% rise this year and a cash sum for last year for most of the staff on the contract, which includes all NHS workers apart from doctors, dentists and very senior managers.
But the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the second largest union in the country, Unite, rejected the offer, though a ballot recently revealed that nurses did not wish to continue striking.
Last week, the government published its plan for a massive shake-up of how the NHS recruits and retains staff, promising thousands more workers in a bid to revive and reform the embattled health service.
Barclay dodged questions about where funding for the £2.4bn plan would come from.
Under the ambitious NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan, more than 300 000 extra nurses, doctors and other health workers are expected to be employed in the NHS in England over the coming years.
The possibility of cutting the amount of time doctors spend in medical school, driving up the number of home-grown NHS staff and ramping up apprenticeship places, are among the ideas to resolve severe staff shortages.
The plan, along with new retention measures, could also mean the NHS has at least an extra 60 000 doctors, 170 000 more nurses and 71 000 more allied health professionals in place by 2036/37.
But the plan comes as the NHS grapples with industrial action and staff frustration at pay and conditions, as post-pandemic pressures continue.
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