JUNIOR doctors have accepted a strike-ending pay deal, finally bringing an end to 18 months of crippling NHS walkouts.
Members of the British Medical Association voted yes to a salary boost worth between £7,000 and £12,000.
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The contract bumps their starting salary from £29,384 to £36,616.
By the time they are fully qualified they will earn a whopping £70,425, up from £58,398.
Strike leaders Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi encouraged members to vote yes in a ballot that ended on Sunday.
They told militant colleagues it was the best they could hope for right now.
But they have threatened to strike again next year if they don’t get another pay rise in 2025.
The breakthrough will be a relief for patients who have suffered 1.5million appointment cancellations since March last year.
And it is a win for the new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, who pledged to succeed where the Conservative government had failed.
There were 11 junior doctors’ walkouts totalling 44 days – meaning more than a month’s labour lost, with more than 20,000 staff striking each time.
Today’s solution brings an end to the last nationwide NHS strike in England.
The new pay deal amounts to a total of increase of between 21 and 25 per cent between 2023 and 2025.
The exact amount they will receive depends on their career stage but it is spread over a three-year deal plus a cash bonus.
Trainee medics will receive a backdated increase of four per cent for 2023-24 on top of a pay rise they already received this year, of between eight and 10 per cent.
They will then get a further six per cent for 2024-25, along with a consolidated £1,000 payment.
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The total package will cost taxpayers around £1 billion.
When it was announced Dr Laurenson and Dr Trivedi said: ““We are recommending that members vote for the deal.
“We believe that this is the best offer available at this moment in time, acknowledging there is still more work to be done in the future.”
The impact of the industrial action has been felt in the short- and long-term.
Appointments were cancelled during the walkouts and experts say they also thwarted attempts to bring down the waiting list.
Hospitals in England still have a total waiting list of 7.6million – about the same as a year ago – with NHS chiefs and ministers saying strikes have made it harder to clear the backlog.
In at least one case already a strike was blamed for contributing to a patient’s death.
Daphne Austin, 71, died of sepsis in June last year after developing complications that were not properly treated during a junior doctors’ strike, a coroner ruled.
Robert Cohen, coroner for Cumbria, said: “Neglect contributed to Ms Austin’s death.”
The British Medical Association said Ms Austin’s condition was worsened by the NHS trusts “lack of preparation” for the strike.
‘THIS WAS ONLY EVER POLITICAL’
HEALTH Secretary Victoria Atkins said in May that the BMA’s decision to strike in the last days of the general election campaign showed the walkouts were only ever political.
The junior doctors’ committee is seen to be left wing and opposed to the Conservative Party – but claimed they would not go any easier on a Labour government.
When it announced July’s strike before the election, the committee’s leaders said: “When we entered mediation we did so under the impression that we had a functioning government that would soon be making an offer. Clearly no offer is now forthcoming.”
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said the choice of dates was a “highly cynical tactic”.
She wrote on X: “Announcing this during an election and on Labour’s health day shows this was only ever political and not about patients or staff.”
