The TRUTH about resident doctors’ pay and their eye-watering demands for up to £20,000 extra a year – ahead of 5-day NHS strike

The analysis uses misleading statistics to justify eye irrigation fees of striking NHS doctors.

In search of salary increases worth £ 20,000, resident doctors will stop hospitals as of Friday while strikeing for five days.

Militant union bosses claim that the massacre should need an increase of more than 29 percent to compensate for 17 -year ‘payment erosion’, known as young doctors.

This is the most generous in the inflation hike-public sector of 5.4 percent this year, above 28.9 percent given to doctors in the last three years.

British Medical Association (BMA) bosses argue that this is not enough.

Health secretary Wes Streeting exploded BMA’s strike action, called ‘shockingly irresponsible’ and insisted that it would not be on a salary.

The government claims that the average full -time basic wage of a resident doctor is at £ 54,300. This rose from approximately £ 42,000 at 2022/2.

If BMA demands are met, its average basic salaries will exceed £ 70,000 per year. Compared to the 2024/25 payment package, this will give an extra £ 20,000 to the most senior calm doctors.

Ministers are still looking for an agreement to prevent further strike chaos, which can see that some of the doctors’ student loan debt is deleted to soothe them.

Settled doctors have carried out industrial action since the first negotiations began in 2022.

Campaign materials pushed by BMA say that payment erosion has been equal to 21 percent of inflation since 2008/09.

Birlik writes on the website: ‘In other words, established doctors are still working free of charge for one -fifth of their time.’

However, this total retail price index (RPI) is calculated according to the inflation measure.

Niffield Trust, who followed the salary against Consumer Price Index (CPI) of calm doctors, found that they have only been below 4.7 percent since 2008.

The an average of an average increase of erosion will be a five percent increase. This will be a wage increase below an average of £ 3,000.

When it has been measured according to CPI levels since 2015/16, Nuffield Trust revealed that there was a wage increase of 7.9 percent of resident doctors.

Government sources have criticized the use of RPI in calculations of BMA exaggerated inflation.

Therefore, RPI reduced it as an official national measure in 2013. Since then, CPI and CPIH (CPIs with housing costs) have been accepted standards for the calculation of inflation.

Mailonline understands that the government will gradually remove its use by the end of ten years.

Mr Streeting, who grilled on the fee of other NHS personnel, said that the cash money to MPS is ‘finite’.

He said: ‘Such options and compromises on resources, BMA residents of the BMA should remember the responsibility I have after receiving a wage increase of 28.9 percent, and I also wanted some of the low -paid colleagues to remember some of their colleagues.

‘Sources are limited and it is important to act for the interests of all NHS personnel and to be a special concern for those who work extremely hard but not properly rewarded.’

However, BMA defended the use of RPI, arguing that it was a more accurate metric for daily people.

A BMA spokesman said: ‘RPI, in accordance with the wider trade union movement, a measure in which people working in the United Kingdom reflect the real life experience best and continue to use when the government is appropriate.

Once, the RPI determines student loan repayments. In a country where new doctors generally have more than 100,000 student debts, this is a heavy part of life costs.

‘Car taxes and train fee limits are also determined by the RPI, and when many doctors move in rotations when they are moved throughout the country, they constitute a large part of finding themselves with a long -standing distances.

‘These movements also mean the need to find housing, a cost that feeds back to RPI calculations and makes it even more relevant to the life of a working doctor.’

Mailonline analysis shows that the basic full -time equivalent (FTE) payment packages for everyone except a group of residents have increased in the last 15 years against CPIh.

Only the 2nd year (MY2) doctors saw a payment erosion while looking at the numbers in this way.

The salaries of FY1, Core Training and Special Registration Company doctors were 1.1, 6.5 percent and 1.7 percent higher than August 2010 compared to CPIH inflation in March 2025.

Our calculations only include basic payment, so about one quarter of the salaries of doctors with additional wages such as overtime and increase for non -social watches are not included.

In September, members of the BMA voted to accept an average government payment agreement worth 22.3 percent to end the end of a strike act that disturbed the previous TORY government.

The 2025/26 Payment Agreement saw that 4 percent of resident doctors gave plus 750 £ 750 consolidated basis’.

This increased by 28.9 percent for three years as an average increase of 5.4 percent.

However, this did not prove enough to prevent further strike action, as the members of the BMA voted in favor of new actions on the proposal. Approximately 90 percent of 30,000 doctors (55 percent participation) voted to go out.

Mailonline, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Care, said: ‘The resident doctors saw the biggest wage increases in the public sector for two consecutive years and a wage increase of 28.9 percent for three years.

‘Public support strikes for resident doctors collapsed and the majority of BMA resident doctors did not vote for these strikes.’

Nuffield Trust researcher Lucina Rolwicz said: ‘Depending on the methods you use, you can draw a very different real-Ers change in the payment packages of resident doctors.

It is important to look at a series of basic years in order to get a more understanding of what is to pay. For example, if you look at what has changed since 2008, the payment erosion seems much worse than you have looked at changes since 2015.

Against the CPI inflation measure, this may create a decrease of 4.7 percent since 2008 or an increase of 7.9 percent since 2015.

‘By using different inflation measurements, the comparison of changes to pay at the same point results in very different answers. For example, the built -in Doctor Pay has fell by 4.7 percent against CPI since 2008, but in the same period, it decreased by 17.9 percent.

‘Considering the importance of discussion for doctors, colleagues, patients and taxpayers, it is very important that we look at all the ways in which the payment has changed.’

Yesterday comes after a report warned that the upcoming strikes may cause cancellation or postponement of 250,000 appointments this month.

Policy exchange, according to the Thought Facility, said that marches may cost NHS’s £ 87 million personnel.

No institutions expressed their ‘deep concerns’ in the action and warned that ‘important problems for patients, pain and worsening health’.

Consultants will be able to charge a comprehensive shift for their young colleagues, buying new browsers, repairing buildings, or offering more procedures to offer more procedures.

Settled doctors have been qualified from the medical school, but they stay in clinical education for up to eight years. They work under the supervision of senior doctors during their work at work.

Last week, an audit, young doctors’ previous strikes led to the death of at least five patients.

NHS leaders warned that the next week can be ‘more life risks’ during a five -day full strike.