Junior doctors and consultants to hold joint strike during Tory conference

Consultants and junior doctors will strike together during the Conservative Party conference, the British Medical Association (BMA) has announced.

The unprecedented hospital doctors’ strike will take place on Sept 20 and Oct 2, 3 and 4, leaving hospitals providing only “Christmas day” cover.

The dates announced by the BMA coincide with the Tory conference, and Nickie Aiken, a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, said on Thursday that the timing “makes it clear their strike plans are politically motivated”.

Dr Vivek Trivedi, the BMA junior doctor committee co-chairman, said: “We will hold a national rally in Manchester on Oct 3 on the doorstep of the Conservative Party Conference.

“Doctors from across England, across different branches of practice, will show we are ready as ever to fight for doctors to be valued and paid their worth.”

Junior doctors have demanded a 35 per cent pay rise and consultants, who are in the top two per cent of earners, claim their incomes have fallen by 35 per cent in real terms over in 15 years.

Both have already held repeated strikes, which experts have warned will hamper efforts to cut NHS waiting lists. Health service chiefs have said it is a “nightmare scenario” and that “patients are paying the price”.

Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, said patients were “shouldering the brunt of the BMA’s relentlessness” and called the joint strike “callous and calculated disruption”.

Waiting lists are at a record high of 7.6 million and continue to grow, with more than 900,000 appointments cancelled because of strikes.

Consultants will walk out on Sept 19 and 20, with junior doctors striking on Sept 20, 21 and 22. Both sets of doctors will then walk out on Oct 2, 3 and 4. The Conservative conference runs from Oct 1 to 4.

Ms Aiken said: “The latest announcement from the BMA makes it clear their strike plans are politically motivated and have nothing to do with patient care or helping to reduce waiting times.

“It is the patients they claim to serve who are the losers in all that. I would urge all those planning to strike to think again, accept the generous pay deal and put their patients first.”

The BMA said it had “no option but to escalate our action” but that it would continue to provide emergency cover. Vishal Sharma, the chairman of the BMA consultants committee, said it would ensure “patients are safe”.

Announcing the new strikes, Dr Rob Laurenson, the co-chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said: “Until the Government moves from its position of another real-terms pay cut, we have no option but to escalate our action”.

It comes after the BMA re-balloted junior doctors to continue its mandate to strike for another six months. The union said on Thursday that 98 per cent of voting members voted to strike on a 71 per cent turnout – around 43,000 junior doctors.

Junior doctors have been given an 8.8 per pay rise this year on average, which the Government has insisted is final.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said the “risk to patients was intolerable”, adding: “There is no excuse for the Prime Minister failing to sit down with NHS doctors to try to bring an end to these strikes. The NHS needs all hands on deck right now. Rishi Sunak cannot continue to sit this out.”

Dr Laurenson said “the Prime Minister has the power to halt any further action by making us a credible offer”, adding: “Rishi Sunak now has nowhere to hide. If he does not come to the table with a credible offer on pay, he will face another six months of strike action.”

Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation said it was “the nightmare scenario that NHS leaders had long feared.

“This is a step too far and will cause unnecessary delays and distress to patients,” he added. “We will seek effective derogations from the BMA, but even with mitigations in place it is inevitable that patient safety is at risk.”

Sir Julian Harley, the chief executive of NHS Providers said: “The announcement of coordinated strike action is a serious escalation in the doctors’ industrial dispute. This is going to be an unprecedented challenge for the health service.

“Today’s vote must be a wake-up call for both sides of the dispute to sit down together, talk, and agree on a resolution.”