Junior doctors ‘could have legal grounds to challenge new contracts’

It is understood the BMA put forward a proposal that would have seen doctors’ basic pay rise by about half the 11% offered by ministers in return for Saturday not to be treated as a normal working day.

A new contract could be imposed on junior doctors within days by the Health Secretary following Wednesday’s 24-hour strike.

Formal talks broke down in January, with payments for working Saturdays being a main sticking point for the British Medical Association (BMA).

But there is growing concern that imposition of a contract will fuel continued industrial action by junior doctors that couple end up crippling the NHS.

Negotiations between the BMA and NHS Employers for new consultants and junior doctors’ contracts began in October 2013.

The BMA says it rejects the government’s “bullying approach to impose a new contract on junior doctors in England” and condemned it as a “total failure on ministers’ part”.

His call comes amid mounting speculation the government are poised to force a contract upon England’s 55,000 trainee doctors. “This will be very reassuring to my colleagues here in Scotland”.

Junior doctors, represented by the British Medical Association, want to be paid 50 per cent extra for working Saturdays all day.

Junior doctors picketed Epsom and St Helier Hospitals between 8am this morning, and will be there until 8am tomorrow.

Government officials criticised the walk out and said that changes to contracts were aimed at improving the public access to NHS services at weekends.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted junior doctors were being offered “a fair deal”.

Mr Stevens, the NHS England chief executive, said: “Drawn out industrial action over contracts and pay would mean further disruption to patients who are relying on NHS care, with thousands more operations cancelled and check-ups delayed”.

He added the government had been willing to be “flexible” on the issue of Saturday pay.

“The government offer is unfair and the strikes are the only way left for the junior doctors to express their protest”, a London-based editor and commentator, Javier Farje told Press TV. “Our message to the government is clear: Junior doctors can not and will not accept a contract that is bad for the future of patient care, the profession, and the NHS as a whole”.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn responded to the decision, saying the move was “provocative and damaging”.