The BMA has announced that resident doctors are to strike for five days in November, which the health secretary has called ‘preposterous’.
The industrial action will take place from 7am on 14 November until 7am on 19 November.
The BMA said this was following a ‘failure of the Government to offer a credible plan on jobs or pay’.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee (RDC), said: ‘This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with Government, pressing the Health Secretary to end the scandal of doctors going unemployed.
‘We know from our own survey half of second year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment, and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.’
He added: ‘We talked with the Government in good faith – keen for the Health Secretary to see that a deal that included options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.
‘We hoped the Government would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors leaving the NHS.
‘Better employment prospects and restoring pay – are a credible way forward that would work for doctors, work for Government and work for our patients. The Health Secretary’s 11th hour letter to us today makes vague promises for some degree of change to jobs and training for two years hence, showing little understanding of the crisis here and now, or a real commitment to fix it.’
Health secretary Wes Streeting said it was ‘preposterous that the BMA have rushed headlong into more damaging strike action a week after its new leadership opened discussions with the government’.
He added that it was ‘reckless posturing’ by the BMA, which would ‘harm patients’ and ‘leave other doctors and NHS staff to pick up the pieces and divert resources away from rebuilding the NHS’.
‘After resident doctors have received a 28.9% pay rise, the government has been clear that we simply cannot go further on pay this year,’ he added.
‘But by walking out on strike, the BMA are walking away from an offer to improve resident doctors’ working conditions and create more specialty training roles to progress their careers. The BMA are blocking a better deal for doctors.
‘These unreasonable and unnecessary strikes do not have the public’s support, nor did a majority of resident doctors vote for them.’
Mr Streeting added that his focus would now be on minimising the disruption to patient care.
‘I urge the BMA to call off these needless strikes and come back to the table. They have a government that wants to work with them to improve the working lives of resident doctors and create an NHS fit for the future,’ he said.
Responding to the news of a five-day walkout by resident doctors in November, the chief executive of NHS Providers, Daniel Elkeles added: ‘Another strike by resident doctors is the last thing the NHS needs, particularly as we head into what’s going to be another challenging winter for the health service.
‘Trust leaders will do everything they can to prepare for this five-day walkout but once again, it’ll be patients that will be left paying the price.’
Last month it was revealed that the NHS waiting list had risen for the second month in a row.
Systems have been preparing for winter pressures through increasing prevention and capacity, with concerns it could be busier than last year.
