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| Volume 55 Number 27, November 8, 2025 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
Photo: BMA
Resident doctors in England, members of the British Medical Association, are set to walk out from 7a.m. on Friday, November 14, for five days. Previously known as junior doctors, resident doctors are taking action over the government's failure to agree to a plan for jobs in the NHS and pay restoration. The lack of jobs in the employment crisis, the latest crisis of which has been caused by government-imposed cuts on NHS Trusts, was revealed by a recent BMA survey. The survey of 4,401 resident doctors showed that 34% of respondents say they have been unable to secure substantive employment or regular locums in time for August next year. Additionally, the government declined to discuss pay solutions, despite doctors' pay being eroded by 21% since 2008.
Since the resident doctors took up their fight to restore their pay under the previous government two years ago, this was their struggle taken up as part of the whole working class actions over recent times that Enough Is Enough! That the junior doctors were speaking out and smashing the silence on their working conditions was a step towards solving the crisis in the NHS, making sure that doctors are there to help tackle the waiting lists and provide the patient care that people need. In other words, the fight of the resident doctors is a fight to provide the care that people need as part of the overall health team. This is precisely what the big cartel parties now represented by the Labour government have proved that they are unable to do, or refused to solve, with their preoccupations of paying the rich and basing the economy on their unjust war preparations at the expense of public services. This has only increased this crisis further since the present government came to power.
Photo: SSTHC
What is so noticeable now is that the fight of the doctors today is also about the whole plan for jobs and pay investment in the NHS and therefore in patient care. The doctors face another government that refuses to negotiate even a reasonable plan for jobs and pay, a government that is deliberately forcing NHS Trusts to impose "vacancy controls" and reduce vital clinical and administrative jobs further - wrecking the NHS - in favour of their schemes to pay the rich.
The government's 10-year plan for the NHS is part of this. Billed as a plan to cut "bureaucracy" and "invest in community care, AI and prevention", instead it is forcing NHS Trusts to cut eye-watering sums from their budgets, directly affecting their services and staffing levels. This is not about ending "bureaucracy" as the Prime Minister and Health Secretary Wes Streeting claimed earlier in the year. Rather it is about real cuts to clinical services and clinical staffing supposedly in favour of more "care in the community".
But, with these lies, what money is being invested by the government is flowing to the private sector. This will have little effect on the backlog of the 7.5 million people waiting for procedures, or any significant impact in improving services. The private sector has no significant capacity, unlike the public sector Trusts which have the capacity but lack the investment. The private sector is also exacerbating the situation, as they take vital clinical staff away from the NHS. Equally, they do not contribute anything towards the cost of training new doctors. By not restoring resident doctors' and GP jobs, nor their level of pay, it has also been noted that the government is deliberately and cynically enabling the transfer of doctors and medical staff to their friends in the private sector in search of better pay and conditions.
In fact, the big cartel party system treatment of the NHS has forced the issue of who decides on health care as on everything else. It reveals that the solutions to the problems in the NHS lie with the health workers themselves whose interest lies in building a modern health service which improves the conditions of patient care. The just struggle of the resident doctors, who are refusing to be ignored and negotiate their plans for jobs and restoration of their pay must be upheld. The need is for everyone to support the resident doctors and take up the fight against the jobs cuts and support a plan for jobs and pay restoration. The aim must be for a new situation where decision-making involves doctors, nurses and all health workers, along with communities and people as a whole, speaking and acting in their own name.