The BMA and the Government have agreed on an offer which could avoid industrial action by SAS doctors.
The offer includes a £5 million funding pot to create more specialist roles ‘where needed’ in the NHS and ‘potential for career progression’ for specialty doctors to more senior roles.
Earlier this year, the NHS workforce plan confirmed Government plans for SAS doctors to join the primary care workforce.
The BMA’s SAS committee had entered formal negotiations last month, following a vote in favour of joining strike action over the Government’s unsatisfactory pay offer.
Health secretary Victoria Atkins said: ‘I value the vital work of SAS doctors and I’m pleased we have been able to make this offer following constructive talks with the BMA.
‘If accepted, it will realign pay scales, improve career progression and support the NHS to create more specialist roles – boosting patient care and supporting the workforce.’
The offer, which will be put to members in the new year, proposes changes to pay scales for specialty and specialist doctors on the 2021 contracts, with an additional uplift of between 6.10% and 9.22%, depending on where an individual sits on the scale.
It also proposes a commitment from Government, NHS England and NHS Employers to work with the BMA to determine how locally employed doctors (LEDs) ‘can be better supported to progress in their careers’, including enabling them to move to permanent SAS contracts.
It comes as associate specialists and specialty doctors, as well as other SAS grade doctors and some locally employed doctors, secured a mandate for taking strike action, with 93.76% of members voting in favour. Specialist doctors are still being balloted, with their vote returning early next year.
The SAS UK committee said it will not call for any industrial action while SAS members consider the offer.
Dr Ujjwala Mohite, BMA’s chair of the SAS UK Committee, said: ‘Today signifies the immense progress that SAS doctors have been able to make in their fight to restore our members’ value. Not only have we achieved an impressive mandate for strike action, but the Government has also, after long negotiations, finally put a credible offer on the table.
‘The results of today’s ballot show the enormous strength of feeling on the ground among SAS doctors, and how important it is to our members that the Government values the work that they do.
‘Of course, we don’t ever want to have to take strike action, which is why we’re delighted to see an offer that, we feel, is deserving of our members’ consideration.
‘But make no mistake: if our members don’t think that this offer reflects their worth, then we won’t hesitate in returning to the Government to renegotiate and, if it comes to it, move forward with industrial action.
‘We will be providing detailed information to our members about the offer in the coming days, so they are able to make a decision about whether to accept it.’
The referendum on the offer will open once the ballot of specialty doctors has been returned in the new year, the BMA said.
Meanwhile, junior doctors in Wales will walk out on 15 January, after 98% of BMA members voted in favour of industrial action over pay restoration in a ballot which ended today.
The BMA said that the 72-hour walkout could ‘potentially’ see over 3,000 doctors withdraw their labour from Welsh hospitals and GP surgeries across Wales ‘in pursuit of a fairer deal for their service’.
BMA Cymru Wales’ junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Oba Babs-Osibodu and Dr Peter Fahey said: ‘This is not a decision that has been made lightly. No doctor wants to take industrial action, but we have been given no choice.
‘Doctors are already voting with their feet and leaving the NHS and we are in a vicious cycle of crippling staffing shortages and worsening patient care.’
And junior doctors in England voted for further strike dates over the Christmas period and in the new year after rejecting the Government’s new pay offer at the beginning of this month.
