Resident doctors in England vote to go ahead with strike

Resident doctors in England will strike as planned this week after they voted to reject the government’s latest offer to end the long-running pay and jobs dispute.

Resident – formerly junior – doctors will strike for five days starting on Wednesday after refusing to accept the deal in a survey by their union, the British Medical Association.

They voted against the deal, which the health secretary, Wes Streeting, proposed last week. It would have increased the number of training places to enable early-career doctors to start training in their chosen medical speciality but not increased their pay for the current financial year.

Their stoppage will pose a challenge to hospitals, which are already grappling with the effects of the early arrival of the NHS’s usual winter crisis, driven by a wave of virulent “super flu”. It will be the 14th strike they have staged since the dispute began in March 2023.

Resident doctors have been voting over the last few days, while ministers and BMA leaders traded increasingly bitter accusations publicly about the dispute.

In an article for the Guardian Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said it was “frankly beyond belief” that the strikes would go ahead with the NHS under such intense pressure.

Streeting also claimed that this week’s walkout would be “the Jenga piece” that caused the NHS to collapse just when patients needed it most.

However, Dr Jack Fletcher, the chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, hit back. He accused Streeting of “scaremongering the public into thinking that the NHS will not be able to look after them and their loved ones”.

Accusing the health secretary of “cruel and calculated” behaviour, he added that Streeting “fails to have any engagement with us outside strikes and then comes to us with an offer he knows is poor and expects us to just accept it within 24 hours.”