The latest strike by resident doctors in England has been “deliberately timed to wreak havoc” by coinciding with the Easter holidays for hospital staff, the head of the NHS has claimed.
Hospitals have struggled to find enough doctors to replace those who refused to work during the six-day strike, said Sir Jim Mackey, chief executive of NHS England.
Many thousands of resident doctors belonging to the British Medical Association were on strike on Wednesday, the second day of a six-day strike, the longest yet in their long-running dispute with the government over pay and jobs. It is the union’s fifteenth strike since March 2023.
In a letter to NHS bosses on Monday night, Mackey said the doctors’ strike risked setting back the health service’s recent progress in improving waiting times for care and public satisfaction with it.
“In that context, it is really disappointing that the BMA resident doctors committee has gone ahead with further industrial action,” Mackey said. “I know how difficult today has been for staff who have contracted the strain across the country, and how disruptive and challenging it has been for many hospitals to manage it and complete their shifts after the Easter weekend.
“We cannot forget that this action has been deliberately programmed to cause havoc.”
Mackey was referring to the fact that, with so many staff absent due to the Easter holidays, hospitals have found it difficult to ensure that as many staff are on duty during this strike as during previous strikes. Most schools in England remain closed during the Easter holidays.
Despite that, hospitals have done a good job of continuing to provide as much planned care as possible and “keeping the show going,” he added. NHS England is trying to ensure that at least 95% of such care continues to operate during strikes.
“There is a long way to go, but it seems that we are in the best place we expected from day one.
“I am so grateful to everyone for everything they have done leading up to today, during today and for what they will do over the next five days or more to cope with these pressures, maintain services and help keep the show going for our patients,” Mackey added.
The BMA’s resident doctors committee called the strike on March 25 in response to what it said was the government suddenly changing the terms of a potential deal to end the dispute. It said its members deserved a 26% pay rise over the next few years to ensure they get a “full pay restoration” to offset the erosion in the real terms value of their salaries since 2008-09.
It accused the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) of failing to deliver on a previously agreed plan to give doctors significant pay rises through additional “progression pay”, linked to them progressing more quickly through their pay bands. The resident doctors committee abandoned talks with the DHSC when it made clear that resident doctors would receive the money (estimated at £700m) over the next three years, and not sooner, as it had wanted and, it said, expected.
Announcing the strike on March 25, Dr Jack Fletcher, chairman of the union’s resident doctors committee, said peace talks had been “making good progress to the point, in the last two weeks, where the government began to change the rules of the game”.
