NHS doctors to strike over Easter despite 22% pay rise under Labour

The BMA claimed resident doctors had been "left with no choice but to strike" after weeks of pay discussions with the Labour Government.

However, the looming walkout comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting buckled to a 22 per cent pay increase for resident doctors.

Negotiations between resident doctors and the Department for Health & Social Care collapsed after "the goalposts were moved at the last minute".

The BMA also stated it had called the industrial action "to make the Government listen, stop the game playing, and come back with an offer that delivers fairly on both jobs and pay".

The dispute centres on what the BMA describes as a fundamental shift in the Labour Government's negotiating position during the final fortnight of talks.

Jack Fletcher, chairman of the BMA's Resident Doctors Committee, said discussions had been progressing well until recently, when it emerged that proposed pay rises would be distributed across a three-year period rather than implemented immediately.

The development coincided with the Doctors and Dentists Review Body recommending a 3.5 per cent pay uplift, which Mr Fletcher characterised as leaving doctors' wages "at best, barely treads water".

The union has consistently maintained that pay restoration remains its central objective throughout the dispute.

Mr Fletcher warned that swift Government action would be essential to avert the planned walkout.

"We cannot ignore that, thanks to global events, economic indicators now point to years of greatly increased inflation," he said.

The BMA chairman stressed that the union would not present doctors with any agreement that risked "locking in further erosion of pay at a time when doctors continue to leave the UK for other countries".

He stressed that negotiations remained open, adding: "We remain willing to negotiate and are eager to get a deal done if we can simply recapture the early positive spirit of negotiations."

Mr Fletcher maintained that the industrial action was not inevitable.

He added: "No strikes need to happen, but the government will need to act fast to prevent them."

He acknowledged that the union had been "negotiating in good faith for weeks" in an effort to resolve what he described as simultaneous crises affecting both pay and working conditions for resident doctors.

The BMA chairman made clear that any settlement falling short of meaningful progress towards pay restoration would be unacceptable.

Mr Fletcher added: "Any deal that did not move us substantially in that direction was not going to fly."

Health Secretary Wes Streeting expressed his disappointment at resident doctors going on strike.

He said: "It is really disappointing that after months of really constructive and good-natured talks with the officers of the BMA's resident doctors committee.

"We've reached a point where their committee has rejected the offer. To be clear about what they're rejecting, through pay structure reform, the average pay increase for the coming year would have been 4.9 per cent.

"For those resident doctors in their first two foundation years of training, that would have been 6.2 per cent and 7.1 per cent.

"And, overall, it means that as a result of the choices that I would have made as Health Secretary, resident doctors would have been, on average, 35.2 per cent better off in pay than they were four years ago."