Junior doctors’ strike: Health secretary urges BMA to “show it is serious” about pay deal

The health and social care secretary, Victoria Atkins, has called on BMA officials to spell out what a reasonable pay offer for junior doctors in England would look like and to “show that they are serious about doing a deal.”Speaking to the House of Commons on 8 January,1 Atkins said, “The [BMA] Junior Doctors Committee’s headline demand of a 35% pay rise is simply unaffordable for taxpayers. If they come to the negotiating table with reasonable expectations, I will sit down with them.”Her comments came at the end of a six day strike by junior doctors in England—the longest single walkout in NHS history—that started at 7 am on Wednesday 3 January. This followed a three day strike from 20 to 23 December, which led to almost 89 000 appointments and procedures being cancelled in England.2Just before the latest action Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the Junior Doctors Committee, said that…
Read Original Article: Junior doctors’ strike: Health secretary urges BMA to “show it is serious” about pay deal »