The British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee has accepted the government’s 22.3% pay settlement, after 66% of junior doctors in England voted in favour of the deal.
Junior doctors, who from Wednesday 18 September will be known as resident doctors, had been in dispute since October 2022 and taken 44 days of strike action.
The pay settlement across the two years of dispute is 22.3% on average. This comprises an additional average 4.05% for 2023-24 in addition to the previously awarded average 8.8%. This takes last year’s pay uplift to 13.2% on average and is backdated to April 2023.
The remainder of the pay increase comes from the recommended 2024-25 pay award announced in July, which gave junior doctors an average uplift of 8% across all grades.
The deal was agreed by health secretary Wes Streeting and the BMA leadership just three weeks after the government came into power.
Junior doctors who are members of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association will vote separately in a ballot closing on Sunday 22 September on whether to accept the pay settlement.
The government has also committed to work with the doctors’ union to streamline the way in which resident doctors report additional hours they work, to ensure they are paid for the work they do.
Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the junior doctors committee, said: “This deal marks the end of 15 years of pay erosion with the beginning of two years of modest above-inflation pay rises. Streeting has acknowledged our pay has fallen behind and has talked about a journey to pay restoration. He believes the independent pay review body is the right vehicle for this, and if he is right then no doctor need strike over pay in future. However, in the event the pay review body disappoints, he needs to be prepared for the consequences.
“The resident doctors committee, as we will be called, will be using the next months to prepare to build on their success so that future cohorts of doctors never again need to see the kind of pay cuts we have. We thank all doctors who have seen us through to this point by standing on picket lines and fighting for their worth. The campaign is not over, but we, and they, can be proud of how far we have come.”
Streeting added: “We inherited a broken NHS, the most devastating dispute in the health service’s history, and negotiations hadn’t taken place with the previous ministers since March. Things should never have been allowed to get this bad.”
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “Health leaders will breathe a massive sigh of relief to know that the ongoing pay dispute between resident doctors and government has come to a successful resolution. While there is still a long way to go to address all the issues raised by resident doctors, we hope that discussions can move forward now pay has been agreed.”
