The academy brokered the talks which led to the new contract, after five previous strikes by junior doctors.
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Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the strike plan was “devastating news”.
The General Medical Council’s chief executive Niall Dickson said the proposed strikes were “unprecedented”.
Chief executive Katherine Murphy said it was a “disturbing” time to be an NHS patient.
“This is only going to increase if the Government and BMA don’t take this opportunity to resume meaningful and honest negotiations to prevent further industrial action”. However, we issued advice earlier in this dispute both to senior doctors and doctors in training, and we will now consider whether further guidance is needed. “Patient safety and quality of care must be the priority”, the organisation said in statement.
The British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, says the physicians will withdraw their labor on September 12-16 from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. each day.
The BMA has rubbished suggestions that the vote by its council to approve the strike action was a knife-edge split of 16-14, saying it is “absolutely behind” junior doctors.
“And I will not engage with you in talking about the long and hard debates that we had inside council over what the best thing to do was”. He denied there had been “block-voting” by consultants and Global Positioning System against the strike but did not deny that representatives had been opposed.
Junior doctors around the United Kingdom, including those at Newham University Hospital, will begin an all-out strike from 8am on Monday, September 12 to 5pm on Friday, September 16.
Mr Timms said: “Nobody can welcome further strike action by junior doctors”. The BMA itself was recommending to its members to accept the new contract just a few months ago in May.
The dispute has already seen six days of strikes in 2016, with the row calming down in May as the parties got around the negotiating table at mitigation service Acas.
Mr Hunt said he thought a deal was agreed in May when the BMA put the proposal to its members.
He claimed the strike would cause “absolute misery” for patients and estimated the number of operations cancelled would be around 100,000, with one million hospital appointments being postponed.
The BMA said it will call off the strikes if the Government agrees to stop the imposition.
The BMA is unhappy with the new contract, which it says will impose damaging changes to junior doctors’ pay and conditions. “That is why I am calling on Jeremy Hunt to be sacked immediately”.
Key concerns raised by junior doctors include the impact the contract will have on those working less than full-time, a majority of who are women, and the impact it will have on junior doctors working the most weekends, typically in specialities where there is already a shortage of doctors.
He added: “We have already had a 48 hour version but this is more hard”. It is too important to be rushed to meet a political deadline.
“We’re devastated that the government has not listened to junior doctors”, she said. But 58% of their junior doctors rejected the fresh agreement.
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“Despite our efforts to work with [Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt] to resolve this dispute, the government has failed to listen, leaving us with no option but to take more industrial action”, the union said.
