The British Medical Association (BMA) trade union on Wednesday backed plans for a full walkout of junior doctors from 0700 GMT to 1600 GMT for five days from September 12, the longest in the near 70-year history of the National Health Service.
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But Mid Sussex MP Sir Nicholas Soames said the BMA was the first trade union to call for strike action against a deal it “negotiated and pronounced a good one”.
Dr Ellen McCourt, chair of the BMA junior doctors’ committee, said junior doctors would call off the strikes if the government cancelled its decision to impose the contract.
The new contracts are part of wider plans to make the health service a “7-day NHS”, but are unpopular with doctors because they feel they do not do enough to reward those who work weekends and hit part-time workers unfairly.
He said: “Perhaps 100,000 operations will now have to be cancelled, around a million hospital appointments will have to be postponed, causing worry, distress and anxiety for families up and down the country”. The doctors dispute that, saying the BMA put the offer to them, but remained neutral and did not recommend it.
Hospitals in England are having to prepare for five days of strike action after junior doctors switched up a gear their campaign against the new working contract.
A spokesman said: “We are acutely aware that the NHS is under extreme pressure at the moment”.
“I therefore repeat my call to the Government to agree to an urgent cross-party process aimed at achieving a new settlement for the NHS and care”.
Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Diane Abbott said the strike was “always likely”, given the “intransigence” of the Government.
The BMA is also calling on the government to “restart meaningful talks to agree a contract that is adequately funded, fit for objective, delivers for patients and has the confidence of the profession”.
In May, both sides agreed to a new deal but junior doctors and medical students voted to reject this in July.
There appeared to be a breakthrough in May in the long-running dispute over proposed changes to contracts, which doctors’ leaders say includes pay cuts for unsociable hours.
“Above all else, the Government and the BMA must appreciate they are in a privileged position: words seem to come easy and cost very little to them, but to the public it is costing them a great deal in lost working days, anxiety, pain and uncertainty”.
The British Medical Association council chairman Dr Mark Porter has blamed the dispute on Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who he accuses of refusing to do “anything other than impose a contract on junior doctors”.
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Speaking of which, recent NHS leaks show “workforce overload” is a major internal concern about Hunt’s promised “truly seven-day NHS” without extra funding or staff.
