Junior doctors’ strike to go ahead

The Government could push ahead with imposing a new contract on junior doctors if an agreement on pay and conditions cannot be reached in the next few weeks, a key figure in the talks has said.

Junior doctors were originally going to stage a full walkout lasting 48 hours next week.

But it said today that negotiations have “floundered” after the government’s “continued refusal to put reason before politics”.

But junior doctors will now take to picket lines again after talks ended without agreement, despite the efforts of the Department of Health’s newly-appointed chief negotiator Sir David Dalton, who has been praised by the BMA.

Junior doctors will walk out for a second time next week in the dispute over pay and working hours, the British Medical Association has confirmed.

The doctors – medical-school graduates training to be consultants or family practitioners – staged a first strike last month to protest against the proposed contract, which would alter the way they’re paid and reduce compensation for evening and weekend work.

Instead, junior doctors will provide emergency care only from 8am on Wednesday February 10 to 8am on Thursday February 11.

South Tees NHS Foundation Trust, which runs James Cook University Hospital, said 37 operations – 18 inpatient and 19 day cases – were cancelled, along with 156 outpatient appointments.

Currently, the periods between 7pm to 7am Monday to Friday and the whole of Saturday and Sunday attract a premium rate of pay for the trainee medics.

Ms Malawana said that she felt junior doctors had no choice but to undertake industrial action. It is, therefore, particularly frustrating that the Government is still digging in its heels. The government says the new terms are needed to move to seven-day-a-week working, a priority it’s set for the NHS, and that most doctors would not be worse off.

A spokesman for the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) said: “Acas conciliation talks adjourned on Friday”.