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The trouble with over a decade of failing to raise pay in the public sector in line with inflation is that eventually you run out of other people’s free labour.
As for this bit: “NHS England and ministers have both said strikes by doctors are a factor in the rising number of people waiting for treatment.”
The waiting list began to slide in around 2011-2012 and progressively grew until 2020 when it then began to skyrocket. The problems predate the current strike action.
My friend has recently joined the NHS as a doctor's assistant. No training, shit pay.
Hearing him talk about the job, it sounds like they're essentially making him do the work of a nurse without the pesky pay and training of hiring a nurse.
There may be an argument that if training isn't necessary for a given job, maybe it shouldn't be a requirement to do the job.
I recall listening to a podcast a few years back talking about how RNs (registered nurses) here in the US were taking over some portion of work that had been previously only permitted to be done by doctors, because it really didn't require a doctor's training. That reduces costs, and isn't a problem, as long as the training that an RN has is sufficient to do the job.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm
2021 median registered nurse pay: $77,600 per year
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.htm
2021 median physician/surgeon pay: This wage is equal to or greater than $208,000 per year
If you're requiring the latter to do work that the former can do perfectly well, you're imposing a lot of unnecessary expense on the medical system, basically limiting yourself to a workforce doing those tasks that is a third the size.
The thing I'd look for to see whether too-low training mandates are a problem is whether one had unacceptably high rates of error and whether, upon investigation, those were traced back to limited training.