Outside Manchester Royal Infirmary, car horns beep as striking medics wave orange placards demanding “Pay Restoration for Doctors.”
Most are decked out in matching British Medical Association-branded tangerine baseball caps and bucket hats. Some carry homemade cardboard signs: “Overworked, underpaid, undervalued” or “Wes: stop (S)Treating us like [poo drawing]”.
They have gone out on strike for five days from Friday after talks with the health secretary, Wes Streeting, broke down last week. Doctors say that in real terms their pay has decreased by 21% since 2008, and they are demanding an increase in salaries for resident doctors.
Many graduate from medical school with student debt of £100,000 or more, they say, with the cost of continuing training such as exams also placing a heavy financial burden on new doctors who, the BMA says, earn just £18.62 a hour.
In Manchester, public support for the strike appears to be evident; there is a raised fist or a beeping horn from almost every second vehicle that drives past.
It is not the first time doctors have taken such action – there were 11 separate strikes during 2023 and 2024 alone. But the doctors here say they had hoped a change of government would bring an end to the long-running pay dispute.
Last September, doctors voted by 66% to accept a government pay deal, with Streeting promising a “journey” to pay restoration. But now they are on strike again, saying progress has been too slow and this year’s pay increase from the government is not what they had expected.
“We’re out on strike today because no doctor today is worth 21% less than they were in 2008,” Mohammed Kamora said. “We’re asking for the government to restore our pay. We’re not even asking for that to happen in one go. We’re asking for a journey to make that happen. We don’t think that’s unreasonable.
But, Kamora added: “If we continue on the current trajectory, it’s going to take us well over a decade to reach pay restoration. Think of how many doctors we’re going to lose in the interim if we continue.”
Shanu Datta, a co-chair of the BMA’s consultant committee, is not involved in the strike, which does not include consultants, but had come down to the picket line to support resident colleagues. “We had a very cordial meeting with the secretary of state in December. We thought that could be the basis of conversations going forward,” he said.
“Our hope was that we would have a sense of conversation around restoring our pay over time, and that’s what Wes Streeting was saying in opposition, and the deal that we thought we’d made, or we had made, last year was going to be the basis, a foundation for more discussion, more conversation going forward, and that’s what’s not happening.”
Datta added: “These are some of the brightest young people. I’ve been talking now to some of them. Some of them want to be cancer specialists, some of them want to be emergency medicine specialists, some of them want to be psychiatrists.
“If we can’t get these people to stay in this country and the NHS specifically, then the NHS is doomed, frankly.”
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Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, a BMA resident doctors committee co-chair who has been among those leading the strikes, joined the Manchester picket line.
“We’re not asking for everything all at once,” he said. “All we want is for Wes Streeting to keep his promise of restoring our pay as a journey. The 0.9% increase above inflation that was given this year is not an adequate step in that journey. So that’s why we’re out today.
“I must be honest, I’m very disappointed, I expected more. I think when [Streeting] initially came in, there were lots of grand words about settling the strikes and this journey to restoring our pay, but when the time came to deliver on the second step he couldn’t do it.”
Nieuwoudt also pointed out that when resident doctors – then known as junior doctors – went on strike under the Conservative government, Streeting was a vocal backer and called on the then health secretary to take action to end the dispute. “I’m wondering where that man is now,” he said. “He was making some good points.”
He also hit back at claims by Streeting that the strike would undermine the trade union movement, saying the health secretary’s comments were “a very strange thing to say”.
“I think when doctors are leaving the country, when doctors are struggling with pay and conditions, and genuinely are losing hope that the NHS will be a place worth working in, I don’t think representing our members and taking them out on strike action is undermining the trade union movement in any way,” Nieuwoudt said.
“If the membership has voted to do this action, and we’re representing our membership, then that seems exactly what a union should be doing.”
Streeting said: “Despite a 28.9% pay rise for their members over the last three years, and constructive talks on range of measures to improve the working lives of resident doctors, the BMA leadership chose to walk away from talks and lay the damage at the NHS’s door.
“There is no getting around the fact that these strikes will hit the progress we are making in turning the NHS around. But I am determined to keep disruption to patients at a minimum and continue with the recovery we have begun delivering in the last 12 months after a decade and a half of neglect. We will not be knocked off course.”