Hundreds of junior doctors protest against government plans in Nottingham

Protests in Belfast and Nottingham also took place today, with another planned in Dundee on Sunday.

Dr Harriet Nerva, who is also Chair of East of England Regional BMA Junior Doctor Committee, said she had grave fears about the effect the new contracts would have on Addenbrooke’s staffing.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has been slammed as “patronising” by junior doctors, after he claimed they have been misled by their own union over changes the government wants to make to their contracts.

Mr Hunt has indicated he would be willing to look again at how far “normal hours” extend on Saturdays.

A huge crowd has gathered in Waterloo Place to listen to a number of speakers.

Banners carried messages such as “Save Our NHS” and “Bad decisions cost lives”.

Doctor Sheneen Meghji, 32, a junior doctor from London who works at Southend University Hospital, said the new contract plans are “really rather terrible” and are “dire” for the NHS.

Conservative MP Dan Poulter, who is himself a doctor, called junior doctors the “backbone” of the NHS and warned that plans to ask them to work Saturdays and evenings for no extra money would “return to the unsafe hours of the past”.

He said: “We feel that we are backed into a corner by the course of action that Jeremy Hunt has engaged in, which is effectively to say that he’s going to impose this contract and we have to agree with it. So we have no other way of stopping it, or expressing what our members feel, apart from balloting for industrial action”.

She said: “The new contracts aren’t fair or safe – we already work more hours than in our contracts”.

Stormont Health minister Simon Hamilton has said “an imposed contract is not the way forward” and he said he wanted to see an outcome that appropriately recognises the important contribution dedicated junior doctors make in Northern Ireland and across the UK. “It’ not too late for us”, Mr Moran added. He stressed that “this is a good deal for doctors”.

‘I think it is incredibly disappointing, the way that the BMA has misrepresented the Government’s position, ‘ he told the BBC.

“To add insult to injury, junior doctors now face a punitive contract that will slash their earnings by up to 15 to 40 per cent depending upon their speciality”.

“They’re pushing through a contract that is unfair for NHS doctors, unfair for patient safety, and at the end of the day Jeremy Hunt hasn’t run his numbers properly”. The minister says that the proposals is reducing their maximum weekly working hours but BMA has said that the rally in Westminster was a “wake-up call for ministers”.

He said: “We want to change the pay system that forces hospitals to roster three times less medical cover at weekends”.

Basic pay would be increased, but those working in specialties such as A&E say they would still see an overall pay cut.

But he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I have made absolutely clear we do not want to reduce the pay going to junior doctors at all.