Ministers urged to stop ‘gaslighting’ senior doctors ahead of strikes this month

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NHS hospitals in England will be forced to operate a Christmas Day-style service when their most senior doctors stage walkouts on November 25 and 26.

Today health minister Karin Smyth urged the British Medical Association (BMA) to call the strikes off, while saying consultants will not be paid more money.

She told Times Radio that Health Secretary Yvette Cooper met the BMA committee last week and “we are particularly looking at improving their working lives so that we get the best out of them and retain the consultants.”

Asked whether consultants will be paid more, the minister replied: “No. The consultants have had significant pay rises in the last few years.”

BMA consultants committee co-chairs Dr Helen Neary and Dr Shanu Datta said that they “made clear that strikes are not necessary if we can simply have genuine negotiations” during the meeting.

“We have lost a quarter of our pay since 2008, a quarter of us are taking time off due to stress, and we lack the time to innovate and make the health service better,” they added.

“We are currently waiting to hear from government if negotiations that address both the value of consultants’ work and the unsustainability [sic] of our working lives are on offer.

“We still have two weeks to avoid strike action.”

Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr John Puntis, a retired consultant, said that the strike reflects legitimate concern over 14 years of pay erosion and a much deeper unhappiness with working conditions related to the pressure of being in an understaffed and underfunded system.

The BMA accused ministers of “ignoring concerns” of medics when it announced the strike last month.

It says the government’s proposal of a 2.4 per cent pay uplift for 2027-28 would be a “significant” real-terms pay cut that shows ministers are “not taking the BMA’s concerns seriously.”

The overall consultant vacancy rate is at 8.2 per cent, with one in three posts vacant in some hospitals, with two-thirds of consultants planning early retirement.

“Clearly a negotiated settlement that seeks to address these issues is urgently needed rather than gaslighting by ministers,” Dr Puntis said.