Junior doctors in Scotland – now called ‘resident’ doctors following a recent name change agreed by the British Medical Association and the UK government – have received more good news this morning. Humza Yousaf pushed by the prospect of strike action last year by offering medics a 12.4 per cent pay rise and Scotland’s doctor have today been offered another increase of 11 per cent over 2024/25. The doctors’ union is recommending that staff vote for the rise, and now it’s up to medics to accept the latest pay uplift presented to them.
The cumulative rise would see an uplift of 8.5 per cent backdated to April this year, with a further 2.3 per cent boost implemented from 1 October. According to the BMA, in combination with Yousaf’s deal last year, the offer would take medics ‘virtually halfway to pay restoration’ – with two more years to go in which negotiations can be carried out under the former First Minister’s initial agreement. Those benefitting from the offer, if BMA members vote in favour of it in November, include NHS Scotland resident doctors, dentists in training and some clinical academics as the Scottish government looks to invest over £64 million in pay for trainees.
News of the deal has been received well by most, with medics seeing this morning’s offer as yet another step closer to full pay restoration. ‘We’re two years into a four-year process, so nicely on track,’ one Scottish doctor noted, while another added: ‘We’re now back to circa 2016 [pay] levels, so about half way back to the 2008 point.’ The Scottish resident doctors committee insists:
There is still significant work to be done. SRDC is committed as ever to the work of achieving full pay restoration… We also believe that maintaining our trajectory is currently an acceptable step to getting resident doctors’ salaries back to where we need them to be, in a timescale that is tolerable. Achieving full pay restoration remains our unwavering commitment and we are clear that this is the fair, just and only acceptable outcome for the next two years of pay negotiations. The commitment made by the Scottish government in 2023 – ‘to reach a mutually agreeable path to achieve pay restoration and prevent erosion occurring in the future’ – is one which we are continuing to hold them to account.
The offer from the SNP government mirrors the recent rise dished out to medics across England and Wales by Labour’s Wes Streeting. The Health Secretary negotiated a 22 per cent consolidated pay increase with the doctors’ union just weeks after his party came to power, and was backed by BMA co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi. In a similar vein to the Scottish union, the BMA chairs noted that ‘this offer does not go all the way to restoring the pay lost over the last decade and a half’, and have pledged to restore medic salaries to 2008 levels. Whether pay progress will continue at this pace over the next few years – particularly in light of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending constraints and the Scottish government’s regular grumbles over money – is quite another matter.
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