England's senior doctors to strike for two days in November, emergency cover only

England's most senior hospital doctors, its consultants, will strike next month in a dispute over pay and hours, prompting NHS bosses to warn that patients will suffer pain, discomfort and inconvenience.

Consultants will stage a two-day walkout on 25 and 26 November. On those days, hospitals will operate with consultants providing only emergency cover, in the way they do on Christmas Day, because most will withdraw their labour, the British Medical Association (BMA) said.

Consultant doctors earn an average of £152,000 a year inclusive of overtime and merit awards.

The consultants decided to strike after 18 months of talks with the government did not lead to agreement on key issues, including their call for action to address a 25% fall in the real-terms value of their salaries since 2009-10. The senior doctors also want a 10% cut in their working hours.

The BMA accused ministers of ignoring consultants' concerns about burnout related to their workloads and said last week's well-below-inflation pay offer of a 2.4% increase for next year was the last straw.

Consultants voted in July to take industrial action. The BMA said that since then, informal talks with the Department of Health and Social Care had produced no meaningful progress, only another cut to the value of their pay.

Ciarán Devane, the head of the NHS Alliance, which represents NHS leaders, said he was astonished and dismayed by the BMA's move at a time when the health service was working to tackle a backlog of more than 6 million patients awaiting more than 7 million treatments.

Devane said a consultant walkout would result in non-urgent outpatient appointments, elective surgeries and follow-ups being postponed or rescheduled. While postponement is needed in the interests of patient safety, it would potentially leave patients in unnecessary pain, discomfort and inconvenience, he said.

"Since we entered into dispute over 18 months ago we have engaged in good faith with the government, proposing practical solutions," said Dr Helen Neary and Dr Shanu Datta, the co-chairs of the BMA's consultants committee. "But time and time again ministers have kicked the can down the road. Unfortunately, that road has now run out, and we have been forced to announce strikes."

They added that not only is their pay still a quarter down in real terms on what it was 17 years ago, they are also not being given time to dedicate their all to the NHS and patients, with quality and improvement traded for the treadmill of target-chasing, driving colleagues to burnout through excessive workloads.

Ben Morrin, the chief executive of NHS Employers, which represents England's 205 health trusts, urged the BMA to be realistic about what size of pay rise was affordable. He added that the strike would weaken the clinical teams in every NHS hospital, which are essential to delivering high-quality patient care this winter.

In June, resident doctors — formerly known as junior doctors — accepted a deal to end a campaign of strikes that had lasted more than three years. Consultants last staged stoppages in 2023, when they walked out for nine days during four strikes.