Junior doctors in Scotland offered 14.5% pay rise

Junior doctors in Scotland have been offered a 14.5% pay rise following negotiations with BMA Scotland.

The new offer from the Scottish government covers the two-year period from 2022 to 2024.

It comes after junior doctors voted earlier this month to strike for 72 hours in what would be their first national walkout over pay.

BMA Scotland said it would put the pay offer to its junior doctor members in a consultative vote.

The Scottish government said the new offer represented a £61.3m investment in junior doctor pay, which it described as the largest in 20 years and the best offer in the UK.

It said that if accepted, the new and final offer would be a pay raise of 6.5% in 2023/24, as well as an additional 3% towards an already agreed 4.5% uplift in 2022/23.

This amounts to a cumulative increase of 14.5% over two years and matches the recent pay award accepted by nurses and other NHS workers in 2023, it said.

In a ballot of BMA Scotland members 97% voted for a 72-hour walkout over calls for a 23.5% increase above inflation.

It follows a strikes by junior doctors in England, who walked out for three days in March and four days in April.

More than 71% of the eligible 5,000 junior doctors in Scotland voted, with 97% in favour of industrial action.

Any strike would impact planned operations, clinics and GP appointments.

Junior doctors - fully-qualified medics who are not specialty staff doctors, consultants or GPs - make up 44% of the doctors in the NHS in Scotland.

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