Jeremy Hunt blasts Junior Doctors for ‘wholly unnecessary’ strike action

Junior doctors at state-run National Health Service hospitals in the United Kingdom began a strike on Tuesday over government plans to impose a new contract changing how they are paid and reducing compensation for evening and weekend work.

The striking doctors say the Government’s proposed new contract will endanger patients by over-working them, but ministers say they need changes to improve weekend care.

It came after talks between the British Medical Association and NHS Employers broke down after the groups failed to reach an agreement on new contracts.

Many would have thought that junior doctors promising to withdraw all except for “emergency care” would mean patient safety was still protected, but now it has been caught up in the BMA’s mid-strike posturing.

Nobody wanted to see our junior doctors take industrial action this week, not least junior doctors themselves.

An anonymous male, 28, who has been a junior doctor for six years, said: “I never thought I would be standing here but the changes are fundamentally unsafe and unfair”.

Junior doctor David Restall, who is now based at Chesterfield Royal, said: “The thing that we are most adverse to is that these plans will have a huge impact on us and this will not be safe for our patients”.

A cohort of juniors staged a Meet the Doctors event in Bedford Square to engage with the public about the dispute. The union shrugged off the fact that trusts had been on Black Alert, closing adult minor services and expressing fears of patient safety being compromised, and instead sulked that such pleas were an “attempt to thwart lawful industrial action”.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has described the walkout as a “completely unnecessary dispute” and called on the BMA to re-enter negotiations with the Government.

“Unfortunately, some of our planned appointments and operations may be cancelled and these will be rearranged for another date”.

It has been 40 years since junior doctors last went on strike. This Industrial Action will place considerable pressure on the NHS, nationally and locally, at a point when staff are working incredibly hard and are already dealing with significant seasonal demand.

BMA council chairman Dr Mark Porter told the Radio 4 Today programme: “We are prepared to speak with Government at any time to try to resolve this on behalf of junior doctors, of course we are”.

But doctors believe it will cut their pay in the long term and remove safeguards that prevent them from working excessive hours.