Most junior doctors have not had a 10% pay rise

Speaking on Kay Burley’s Sky News programme on Thursday (21 March) about the recent vote by junior doctors to continue strike action, health minister Dame Andrea Leadsom claimed junior doctors have had a “more than a 10% pay rise”.

That’s potentially misleading, because it’s not true of most junior doctors in England last year. Although first-year junior doctors did receive a 10.3% increase to their basic pay, most got less, and the average uplift was 8.8%.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care told us that Ms Leadsom misspoke and meant to say “up to 10.3%”.

If an MP makes a false or misleading claim on broadcast media they should take responsibility for ensuring it is appropriately corrected, and make efforts to ensure the correction is publicly available to anyone who might have heard the claim. 

What pay uplift did junior doctors get?

In July 2023, the government accepted the recommendations of the pay review body in full, meaning basic pay for junior doctors in England would be uplifted by 6% plus £1,250.  

In effect, this meant a pay rise of between 8.1% and 10.3%, depending on how far through their training they are. For those earning more, the pay rise was slightly smaller in percentage terms.

From September 2023, first-year doctors therefore received a 10.3% pay increase, from £29,384 in basic pay to £32,397, backdated to April 2023. 

But first-year doctors make up only a small minority of junior doctors. Overall, the average junior doctor got an 8.8% uplift.

As of November 2023, there were 72,667 junior doctors in England (headcount), of whom only 7,713 were in their first year. This means that only around one in 10 junior doctors in England received a pay rise greater than 10%, with the vast majority receiving a smaller rise.

Pay review body figures show the exact increase in basic pay for a junior doctor, depending on their experience, would be:

• Foundation year one: 10.3%
• Foundation year two: 9.7%
• Core training: 9.1%
• Specialty registrar: 8.1% to 8.5%

These pay rise figures do not account for inflation. The Nuffield Trust has estimated that junior doctors’ pay overall rose by about 2.8% in real terms last year.

Image courtesy of Piron Guillaume