While Mr Hunt’s latest proposal will see a few doctors’ salaries increased, these junior doctors – often referred to as the backbone of the NHS – will be expected to work on average 30 per cent more hours for an 11 per cent increase in salary.
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The British Medical Association is preparing to ballot doctors over strike action, which it is claimed up to 90% could support.
It has refused to re-enter negotiations over the new contract and has warned doctors that the contact will result in pay cuts and dangerously long working hours.
“Junior doctors understandably feel strongly about their contract and it is in their interests to be part of the conversation on what their contract will look like in the future – we urge them to return to negotiations”.
The trade union is now getting ready to send ballot papers to its members later this week, with a view to possible industrial action by junior doctors over the continued contract dispute. “The government have so far failed to provide these reasonable assurances, preferring instead to engage in megaphone diplomacy and plough ahead with plans to impose a contract that would be bad for patients as well as junior doctors”.
“This approach, we consider, would be in the best interests of all parties – perhaps most of all those of our patients, to whom we know junior doctors are fully committed”. But a BMA spokesman told PharmaTimes this morning that the Association is not in a position to comment as it has not seen the proposed contract, and only became aware of the government’s new proposals through the media last night.
Mr Hunt said: “I’m completely committed to the values of the NHS – the same values that encourage aspiring doctors to take up a career in medicine”. If junior doctors go on strike it could mean a disruption to non-emergency hospital services.
“At no point have we as doctors asked for a pay rise. We are fighting for our current pay with no increase in hours or restructuring of working day which would reduce our pay”, she told The Independent.
And they protested the contract changes in their thousands.
‘When the decisions are life and death patient safety is at risk.
“I think people have to not take anything the health secretary says at face value”, Ms Muldoon added.
In another significant step away from the status quo, pay rises for junior doctors will now be performance-based rather than in automatic yearly increments regardless of achievement.
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Dr Malawana told Today: “In order to have meaningful discussions you need to remove the threat of imposition and you need to actually address the concerns that junior doctors have, and we need a commitment from the Secretary of State to do that”.
