Hospital doctors in England are set to stage a five-day walkout starting at 7:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) on July 25, their union announced on Tuesday. This comes ten months after they agreed to end a lengthy series of strikes.
The action, involving junior doctors those below consultant level was confirmed by the British Medical Association (BMA), which accused the government of refusing to engage in pay negotiations. The union said officials had insisted on focusing on non-pay matters without clarifying what those would entail.
Last September, the doctors accepted a two-year pay deal amounting to a 22.3 percent increase, shortly after Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government came to power. At the time, the BMA’s junior doctors’ committee welcomed the offer as marking “the end of 15 years of pay erosion,” though they acknowledged that pay remained 20.8 percent lower in real terms compared to 2008.
The earlier wave of strikes had led to widespread disruptions in the healthcare system, with thousands of appointments cancelled and treatments delayed. The former Conservative government had rejected the BMA’s demand for a 35 percent pay restoration, prompting the prolonged industrial action.
In contrast, the Labour government sought to ease tensions with a series of pay offers to public sector workers, including teachers and train drivers. However, the 15 percent three-year deal for train drivers was met with criticism from the Conservative opposition.
