'Give our striking junior doctors the salary they deserve'

13 January 2024 , 16:25

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Junior doctors were on strike earlier this month (Image: PA)

Junior doctors can save our lives – and our politicians can ruin them. Yet MPs get paid almost three times the amount junior doctors do. It is outrageous.

No wonder those hard-working, life-saving, passionate people have gone on strike. Our country is in a dreadful state and politicians are to blame for that.

I have a friend who is being treated in intensive care and he is being looked after brilliantly, despite the strike.

The pressure our beloved NHS is under is a direct result of how this Government has fleeced us over the years. Not only have the Conservatives fleeced us, they have also pulled the wool over our eyes. Every week there is a new scandal, just like the horrendous miscarriage of justice at the Post Office.

Yes, junior doctors have had two pay rises, but they still only start on just over £32,000 a year. An MP gets paid £86,564. Junior doctors can literally hold our lives in their hands and work untold amounts of hours. Not only that, they have spent years at medical school, racking up thousands of pounds of student debt for the privilege of earning not much more than the minimum wage.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade

Meanwhile, the wage the politicians earn each year – with lengthy holidays and a hefty expense account – still isn’t enough for them. Many of them have their hands in different cookie jars, earning a pretty penny from second jobs such as public speaking or advisory roles.

A junior doctor doesn’t have enough hours in the day to take on a second job – and even if they did, they would be too bloody exhausted.

I don’t blame the ones who have decided enough is enough and are leaving to work in countries like Australia, where they will be well paid and have a better work-life balance. But it is a travesty we are giving some of our most talented and dedicated young people no option but to leave.

Instead of trying to keep our junior doctors on British soil, those in positions of power try to denigrate them and turn them into the enemy for going on strike. I have no doubt that striking is a complete last resort for those doctors. But sometimes, you have to do things you would never have dreamed of in order to make change.

I completely empathise with people who are in hospital, terrified about the strikes and the implications of those. But as disruption continues amid the pay row, let’s not blame the junior doctors. Let’s blame the people in power who have continually stripped back funding for the NHS and left it in the state it is in.

They are the ones we should be pointing the finger of blame at, not the junior doctors.

Antony Cotton