After 22 months of on-and-off strikes, junior doctors have voted to accept the government’s offer of a 22.3 per cent pay rise over the next two years. But this doesn’t mean the strikes have come to an end. Rather, the government seems to have secured itself only a brief pause from the walkouts, before the negotiation process (and potential strikes) start up again next year.
The British Medical Association announced last night that 66 per cent of the 46,000 junior doctors who voted agreed to the deal. This includes an additional backdated 4 per cent pay increase on top of the 9 per cent awarded by the previous government for the last fiscal year, as well as another 8 per cent increase this year. The pay settlement comes after almost two years’ worth of strikes that cancelled over 1.5 million appointments and operations, at a time when the NHS waiting list sits at near-record levels.
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