During his BBC interview Mr Hunt insisted “I’m prepared to have talks at any stage”.
Advertisement
Mr Hunt said 100,000 operations across the country might have to be cancelled and one million appointments postponed.
“Some junior doctors already work overseas after their second year of hospital training or perhaps after their fifth year of training”.
The Patients Association said the action would cause great disruption to many patients, including people who have been waiting a long time for appointments and operations.
But BMA chairman Dr Mark Porter said: “The council is absolutely behind, as is the rest of the BMA, absolutely behind the decision that has been taken”.
A spokesman for Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said extensive planning and preparation would be undertaken to ensure it keepspatients safe and quality care is maintained during the industrial action.
He said hospitals had only been given 12 days’ notice, “which is much less than we’ve ever had before”.
There are some 55,000 junior doctors in England, about a third of the medical workforce.
It comes amid fears that hundreds of thousands of operations across Britain are at risk in what has been described as an “unforgivable” wave of strikes by junior doctors have been raised by health professionals.
Industrial action was put on hold in May when the two sides got back round the table at conciliation service Acas. The contract has changed since the original ballot past year – so much so that the BMA recommended accepting it in May.
A new contract agreed at those talks was backed by the BMA, but later rejected by the junior doctors, leading to the government announcing it would impose new terms and conditions.
How does your job compare?
“We have a simple ask of the government: stop the imposition”.
The new contract, which the government intends to impose next month, includes the reduction of unsocial payments for weekend working, with Saturday and Sunday between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. reclassified as normal working days and nightshift rates reduced, along with the elimination of automatic pay progression.
National Voices, an umbrella organisation for 140 health and social care charities such as the Alzheimer’s Society and Prostate Cancer UK, was also opposed to the action, which the BMA has said will take place on five consecutive days every month for the foreseeable future.
This action will be followed by “further dates” which are yet to be confirmed, a BMA spokeswoman said.
However, the BMA said junior doctors had been left with “no choice” but to start fresh strike action after failed attempts to resolve the remaining issues with the contract.
He replied: “Health Secretary is never the most popular job in British politics because people are passionate about the NHS”.
“The BMA should be putting patients first – not playing politics”, she added.
Advertisement
“How dare the doctors barter lives for cash”, fumed the Daily Mail leader column headline today, as junior doctors announce a week of strikes in mid-September.
