Ministers are bracing themselves for a potential wave of NHS strikes in England after doctors denounced pay rises of up to 5.4% this year as “derisory” and threatened to take action in protest.
Teaching unions, after teachers were awarded a 4% increase, also responded angrily at the government’s refusal to fully fund the deal and warned that it would damage the quality of education that pupils received. The largest union said it planned to take the first step towards possible industrial action.
The decision to award 1.4 million NHS staff including nurses, midwives and ambulance workers a smaller rise – 3.6% – also provoked criticism. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said it was “grotesque” to hand doctors a bigger increase than nurses who earned less than them.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, sought to promote the rises by highlighting that they represented the second time public sector personnel had received above-inflation pay rises since Labour took power last July.
Inflation rose sharply from 2.6% in March to 3.5% in April – the highest level since January 2024.
The pay rises are bigger than the 2.8% ministers had previously maintained was the most they could afford for 2025-26. They are broadly the amounts recommended by the independent public sector pay review bodies.
But the British Medical Association (BMA) said increases of 4% for consultants, GPs, specialists and speciality doctors and 4% plus £750 for resident doctors (formerly known as junior doctors) were “woefully inadequate” and showed ministers’ “lack of commitment to restoring doctors’ lost pay”.
The BMA told Streeting he needed to open talks and explain how he would end the significant erosion in the real-terms value of salaries that doctors had experienced since 2010. “The health secretary can avert strike action by negotiating with us and agreeing a route to full pay restoration,” said Prof Philip Banfield, the union’s chair of council.
The 4% plus £750 deal offered to the BMA’s estimated 55,000 resident doctor members was inadequate because it did too little to reverse historic pay erosion, the union added. The BMA recently initiated a ballot of resident doctors on their willingness to strike for better pay, even before they received details of the offer.
Sources close to Streeting pointed out that resident doctors’ leaders had recently said 5% was the minimum rise for this year they would find acceptable, but were rejecting one that equated to a 5.4% rise. He was frustrated that they were “moving the goalposts” with their public comments, they said.
The Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association said the 4% for consultants was “a real-terms pay cut for senior doctors compared to inflation”. It will hold a consultative ballot to assess its members’ readiness to take industrial action over their salaries, as will the RCN and GMB unions.
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The National Education Union (NEU) warned it would “register a dispute” with the government unless it agreed to fully fund the award for teachers. As things stand schools in England will have to find £400m of savings from their existing budgets, with Phillipson providing £615m extra to cover the bulk of the cost.
Luke Sibieta, a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the £400m equated to about 1% of schools’ budgets. “This is a bit less than was assumed a few months ago in the government’s proposals to the pay review body, which will probably come as a slight relief to schools,” he added.
Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, said in many schools the 1% would result in “cuts in service provision to children and young people, job losses, and additional workloads for an already overstretched profession”. He said: “Unless the government commits to fully funding the pay rise then it is likely the NEU will register a dispute with the government on the issue of funding, and campaign to ensure every parent understands the impact of a cut in the money available to schools, and that every politician understands this too.”
Phillipson defended forcing schools to part-fund the award, saying the government was “taking tough decisions” on spending and value for money. “School leaders must meet the challenge too. That’s why we are asking schools to fund the first 1% of the pay rise through improved productivity and smarter spending,” she said. “We know this is achievable. There are schools already driving down their costs and making the savings needed.”
Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed the 4% increase and that the award had been announced earlier than in previous years, but he also criticised the failure to fund it. “If the government really thinks it will be possible to bridge this funding gap through ‘improved productivity and smarter spending’ then it is mistaken. Schools have already spent many years cutting costs to the bone and beyond,” he said.
