Historic healthcare sector strike in Britain heaps pressure on PM Sunak

LONDON – The British government said on Tuesday that it is looking to force some healthcare staff to work during industrial action, as senior and junior doctors in England prepared to take coordinated strike action for the first time.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under pressure to get a grip on the industrial action.

He has launched a consultation to weigh introducing minimum service levels to require some doctors and nurses to cover urgent, emergency and time-critical hospital-based services during strikes in 2024, the government said in a statement.

Senior doctors, known as consultants, began a 48-hour walkout on Tuesday and will be joined by junior doctors on Wednesday.

Junior medics will then continue their strike with a “full walkout” on Thursday and Friday.

Both groups will strike again from Oct 2 to 4, coinciding with the ruling Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester.

Doctors have said they will operate at Christmas Day levels of service, providing emergency care.

“What we’re announcing today is how we protect time-critical hospital services, so things like chemotherapy, things like dialysis, because we recognise the right to strike is important, but we’ve got to balance that with also the right of patients to key treatments,” Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay told Sky News.

He said France and Italy already have such measures in place.

Mr Sunak’s administration has already introduced a

law to make it harder for essential workers such as firefighters and teachers to walk off the job.

The government says around 900,000 patient appointments in the state-run National Health Service (NHS) have already been cancelled as a result of doctor strikes in 2023.

“The NHS has simply never seen this kind of industrial action in its history,” NHS national medical director Stephen Powis said in an e-mailed statement.

The walkouts are a major blow to Mr Sunak ahead of a general election expected in 2024.

The opposition Labour Party is leading in opinion polls, and is eyeing a return to power after 14 years.

Ongoing strikes can reinforce an impression of public service decline under the Conservatives, and trade unions aim to underline this by coordinating action during the party’s high-profile gathering.

In July, junior doctors were awarded a 6 per cent pay rise and a lump sum of £1,250 (S$2,110) for 2023-2024, but the British Medical Association (BMA) trade union said they are still facing a pay cut in real terms.

Consultants also received a 6 per cent rise, but the BMA, which represents nearly 200,000 doctors in Britain, said they are seeking a pay rise above the level of retail price index inflation for the 12 months to April – 11.4 per cent.

“We are simply asking for fairness and are demanding an end to real-terms pay cuts and a fair mechanism for this pay loss to be corrected,” Dr Vishal Sharma, chair of the BMA’s consultants committee, said in an open letter to Mr Sunak and Mr Barclay.

But the government does not plan to reopen negotiations.

“In terms of pay for this year, we’ve set a fair and final position,” Mr Barclay told Times Radio.

“This week’s coordinated and calculated strike action will create further disruption and misery for patients and NHS colleagues,” he said. “My top priority is to protect patients and these regulations would provide a safety net for trusts and an assurance to the public that vital health services will be there when they need them.”

NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery warned that enforcing minimum service levels does not address the reasons – mostly pay and working conditions – why health workers are striking.

“(It) risks worsening industrial relations at a time when we need government and unions to get around the table and enter into talks to avert further escalation and disruption to patient care,” she said.

Inflation

Train drivers have also announced

strikes over pay and conditions

at the beginning and end of the Conservative conference, when attendees will be travelling.

Mr Sunak had hoped to draw a line under Britain’s worst period of worker unrest since the late 1980s by signing off on pay rises for millions of public-sector workers in July.

That brought an end to walkouts by teachers, while nurses ended their strikes in June.

But industrial action continues apace by doctors and railway workers.

The BMA has said consultants and junior medics have suffered significant real-terms pay cuts and that recruitment and retention are being affected.

Mr Sunak has argued that excessive pay deals risk fuelling inflation that, at 6.8 per cent, is still running at more than three times the official target.

The Premier is also eager to limit spending on a health service in which costs keep spiralling – from 2 per cent of gross domestic product in the mid-1950s when it was created to 10.2 per cent in 2019 and an estimated 13.8 per cent by 2067.

But failing to negotiate with doctors is fraught with political risk, not least because one of his five core promises is to reduce NHS waiting lists.

The waiting list for procedures and operations stood at a record 7.68 million in England at the end of July, according to the latest figures – up more than 100,000 in a month.

Mr Sunak has blamed the rise on striking doctors, but the BMA says the increasing waits are down to the government’s failure to invest in staff.

Ms Cordery warned that this week’s doctor strikes are “likely to cause disruption to patient care unlike anything we’ve seen before”.

“There is a deep and growing frustration among trust leaders at the sheer lack of inaction to even start to break this deadlock,” she said in an e-mailed statement. “We cannot allow strikes to become business as usual for the NHS.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said the average junior doctor is getting an 8.8 per cent pay rise in 2023, with consultants’ pay hiked by 6 per cent.

The government’s door is “always open to discuss non-pay issues but this pay award is final so we urge the BMA to call an end to this disruption”, the spokesperson said in a statement.

NHS England’s Professor Powis urged patients to use the health service “wisely” during the strike and to only use 999 or emergency departments for “life-threatening” situations. BLOOMBERG