Hospital doctors in England have accepted a 22.3-percent government pay offer, their union and the health ministry said Monday, ending a wave of damaging strikes that hit patient care. Junior doctors—those below consultant level—have staged a series of walk-outs over the last 18 months in protest at below-inflation wage increases since 2010 and as cost-of-living pressures increased.
Soon after it was voted into power in July, the new Labour government proposed the substantial rise over two years to end the industrial action that saw the medics strike 11 times. The British Medical Association's Junior Doctors' Committee in England said 66 percent of its members had now voted for the deal in a ballot. "It should never have taken so long to get here," said committee co-chairs Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, hailing the deal as "the end of 15 years of pay erosion with the beginning of two years of modest above-inflation pay rises".
But they added, "There is still a long way to go, with doctors remaining 20.8 percent in real terms behind where we were in 2008." Health Secretary Wes Streeting welcomed the deal and restated Labour's belief that it was fixing a "broken" inheritance from the previous Conservative administration, which governed from 2010.
"Things should never have been allowed to get this bad," he said in a statement. The deal averts future strike action going into the cold winter months, when seasonal illnesses typically heap pressure on the state-funded Natio.