Doctors’ pay demands aren’t just unaffordable, they’re undeserved
Resident doctors are endangering their patients’ lives with immoral strikes based on distorted calculations. The British public must finally see their militant union for what it really is, says Alys Denby
“Resident doctors” as we must now call them (‘junior’ being a term fit for barristers but far too demeaning for these life savers) will walk out for five days from 25 July. This will cause as many as 200,000 appointments to be cancelled – meaning cancer diagnoses delayed, longer waiting lists and agony prolonged for thousands of patients. Be in no doubt that lives will be lost as a direct or indirect result of this industrial action. That is the logic of strikes: they are only as effective as the harm they cause. In this case it is the sick and the dying who are being held to ransom.
And what is the justification? The doctors claim that their pay has been cut since 2008 and are demanding a further 29 per cent increase on top of the 22 per cent they received last year as “restoration”. That’s an absurd figure for a number of reasons.
Primarily because it is unaffordable. As the OBR warned this week – and as City AM readers already knew – Britain is broke. Yet even within current fiscal constraints, “resident”’ doctors are well paid. They can expect to start on a salary of around £38,800 and command an average of about £54,000 plus huge pension contributions and near-guaranteed pay progression. On top of this they have had the most generous pay rises in the public sector.
But also because it is undeserved. Pay rises in the private sector are awarded based on performance, demand and resources within the company. There is no centrally determined level of pay to which any worker is entitled.
No justification
Even if you accept the “pay restoration” argument, the British Medical Association’s (BMA) numbers do not add up. They have used the RPI measure of inflation rather than the much more common CPI. Adjusting for CPI their pay has indeed fallen since 2008, but only by 4.7 per cent. They have chosen 2008 as their benchmark because, being the year of the global financial crash, it was the end of the generous public spending of the Blair/Brown years. If you measure from 2015 instead, “resident” doctors have had a 7.9 per cent real terms pay rise.
Many journalists would no doubt like to be paid at 2008 levels, before social media tanked newspaper sales. I can’t speak for the entire profession, but I doubt many of us are asking for pay rises no media organisation could conscience.
Looking at a waiting list of some 7.4m patients and productivity lagging well behind other parts of the economy, it’s difficult to argue that current NHS performance deserves reward.
Doctors themselves argue that they can earn more abroad. This enthusiasm for free market competition is not matched, though, when it comes to the supply of entry and training opportunities in their own profession. Britain caps the number of medical school places to 9,500 a year to “ensure there are enough high quality placements for each student”. In other words, Britain artificially restricts the number of doctors we train each year – increasing our dependence on immigration – for the essential purpose of guaranteeing every medical student who passes their exams a job in the NHS. No other profession operates this way. “Resident” doctors are welcome to take the skills this country has taught them to Australia if they wish, but they should not pull up the ladder after them. Let anyone who wishes to go to medical school and compete for the best jobs – with commensurate pay – afterwards.
The BMA has chosen an arbitrary year and a distorted index to come up with the highest possible figure with which to blackmail the government. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who sees them for what they really are: an aggressive trade union whose deputy chair described herself as “an unashamed socialist”. After the government paid them off last year, these militants have scented weakness.
Health secretary Wes Streeting is absolutely right to say that “the public will not forgive strike action”. Those doctors who did not vote for this strike – the patriotic majority who work hard and put their patients first – should not forgive the BMA either.
Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of City AM
