Will junior doctors accept the Scottish government’s pay deal?

Junior doctors in Scotland have been offered a 6.5 per cent pay rise for this coming year after voting in favour of industrial action over a fortnight ago. Scotland’s health secretary Michael Matheson says he is ‘delighted’ to have reached an agreement with BMA Scotland, but doctors across the country are less enthusiastic. 

In Scotland, 97 per cent of the junior doctors who voted in the BMA’s ballot did so in favour of strike action, with a high turnout of 71 per cent. They are looking for full pay restoration, which amounts to a 23.5 per cent pay increase above inflation, or an uplift of just under 35 per cent on current levels. Today’s offer falls some way short of that. First Minister Humza Yousaf counted the prevention of healthcare worker strikes during his time as health secretary a key success – but if doctors vote down the deal, a walkout on his watch seems almost certain.

Junior doctors believe that the Scottish government would benefit politically from being more generous than England with its pay offer and many hope the BMA will push for more still. 

The SNP government describes the offer as a 14.5 per cent pay increase over two years: an extra 3 per cent will be put towards an already agreed 4.5 per cent for the 2022/23 period, alongside this 6.5 per cent for 2023/24. It represents a £61.3 million investment in junior doctor pay, according to the government.

The Scottish government has also suggested it will set up a ‘junior doctor pay bargaining review taskforce’ with BMA Scotland’s junior doctor committee. The aim of the taskforce will be to create a new pay bargaining system for medics in Scotland to help prevent pay erosion in the future. The doctors’ union says it is presenting this new deal to medics ‘neutrally’ so that members can decide themselves what they think of the offer. But many junior doctors have already made up their mind: a 6.5 per cent uplift this year is not enough.

Some doctors are directing their frustration at the Scottish government. Others have expressed confusion about why the BMA presented the deal to medics in the first place, saying that they ‘expected better’ from the first set of negotiations and want a ‘hard line minimum offer’ from the doctors’ union. Junior doctors believe that the Scottish government would benefit politically from being more generous than England with its pay offer and many hope the BMA will push for more still. 

Dr Chris Smith, chair of the Scottish junior doctor committee, said that, while the BMA had not accepted any offer at present, ‘the offer that has been made is without doubt an improvement on the 4.5 per cent awarded last year, and the improved offer for 2022/23 would represent a slowdown in doctors’ pay erosion. We feel this offer reflects the best that the Scottish government will offer after this series of negotiations.’

The BMA has urged members to consider the proposed deal carefully, and pointed to ‘two potentially viable paths towards full pay restoration from here’. To accept the offer would secure the 14.5 per cent pay increase from 2022 to 2024, while providing medics with the opportunity to engage with the new taskforce to ‘produce further measures tackling pay erosion in the coming years’. Discussions would be held with the knowledge that junior doctors have the ‘pressure of an industrial action mandate’. 

The best things in life are free (for a month. Then £1 a week)

Unlock a month’s worth of unlimited online and app access by subscribing today for free. After that, it’s just £1 a week – saving more than 50% off the usual rate.

SUBSCRIBE

Alternatively, doctors could reject the current offer as it stands. Grounds for rejection include the fact that the current offer ‘does not provide assurances on pay restoration’ while being ‘sub-inflationary over the two-year period’ despite, as the BMA says, it being an ‘above inflation offer for this year if inflation falls as predicted’. Following this, dates for strike action would be chosen and announced.

So what will BMA members do? They now face an online vote on the offer which will determine their next steps. Matheson seems to believe that the government has taken the concerns of junior doctors ‘extremely seriously’, but the attitude among many medics is that the current pay offer, as it stands, is a joke.

No Byline Policy

Editorial Guidelines

Corrections Policy

Source