By Brian O’Flynn and Helen Johnson
Junior doctors in England voted this week to accept the government’s pay deal after months of industrial action.
Though it supported the deal, the doctors’ union – the British Medical Association (BMA) – says it still leaves junior doctors worse off than they were in 2009.
FactCheck takes a look at the figures.
How much will junior doctors get?
The deal is equivalent to a 22 per cent pay rise over two years.
Junior doctors will receive a rise of 13 per cent for the year ending March 2024, and a further 8 per cent for the year ending March 2025.
Does this leave doctors worse off than in 2009?
The British Medical Association said the pay offer “does not amount to full pay restoration”.
By this, it means that junior doctors’ pay is still lower than it was in 2009, once we account for inflation.
It calculates that junior doctors’ pay was 30 per cent lower in 2023 than in 2009 in “real terms” (i.e. after inflation).
And it says the new deal would only partly reverse this loss – meaning by 2025, junior doctors’ pay would still be 20 per cent lower than in 2009.
But FactCheck calculates that junior doctors’ pay actually fell in real terms by around 20 per cent, not 30 per cent as the BMA claims. And we estimate that the new pay deal would reduce this loss to around 3 per cent by 2025.
That means that the planned pay rise would actually bring junior doctors very close to pay restoration – up to about 97 percent of their 2009 real-terms pay.
Why are our figures different from the BMA’s?
The BMA uses a measure of inflation called the Retail Prices Index (RPI), while our analysis uses the “Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs”, known as the CPIH.
RPI generally tends to be higher than CPIH – so using RPI will make the real-terms cuts to junior doctors’ pay seem larger.
As the BMA points out, governments have frequently used RPI “when it suits” – including when calculating interest rates on student loans.
The BMA says this is why RPI is used to calculate real pay erosion for doctors. This makes some sense – student loan costs faced by doctors would be directly linked to RPI, for example. It also believes RPI “best reflects the experience of working people in the UK”.
But the Office for National Statistics (ONS) says RPI is “a very poor measure” of inflation, and tends to either overestimate or underestimate actual price changes and how they are experienced.
RPI lost its status as a national statistic over a decade ago, and the ONS now discourages use of the measure.
So even if some individual costs faced by doctors are linked to RPI – like student loan costs – this doesn’t mean that the overall inflation they face is best captured by RPI.
And if we use the recommended measure of inflation – that is, CPIH – junior doctors’ real pay would be almost restored to 2009 levels under the new deal.
What does the government say?
The new government hasn’t made any specific claims about how much doctor pay has eroded, or what the new deal means in terms of pay restoration.
Prior to the offer being accepted, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told FactCheck: “The Secretary of State has been clear that the NHS is broken, and he wants to work with all NHS staff, including junior doctors, to get it back on its feet.”
“The offer being put to doctors is the starting point for a better relationship, it will increase pay for junior doctors and see the BMA, NHS England and government work together to improve working conditions, including by reviewing the current system of rotations.”
After yesterday’s vote, health secretary Wes Streeting said: “I am pleased that our offer has been accepted, ending the strikes ahead of looming winter pressures on the NHS.”
“This marks the necessary first step in our mission to cut waiting lists, reform the broken health service, and make it fit for the future.”
(Image credit: NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock.)
