Doctors vote to go on strike for five days next month amid pay and jobs row

The British Medical Association (BMA) said resident doctors will strike on five consecutive days from 7am on November 14 to 7am on November 19.

Resident doctors, previously named junior doctors, make up around half of all doctors in the NHS.

Speaking to LBC, Dr. Callum Parr, Deputy Chair, BMA Resident Doctors Committee, said the British public supports the move to take strike action.

"I work as a doctor and I speak to patients in ae and when I'm on the wards and when people talk to me and they understand the fact that I have colleagues who I've been to medical school with or trained earlier in my career with who are unemployed, I think patients are really sympathetic to this and I think it is a common sort of sense," he said.

Read more: Resident doctors to vote on strike action in pay row with Scottish Government

In a statement, Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee (RDC), added: “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.

“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.

“While we want to get a deal done, the Government seemingly does not, leaving us with little option but to call for strike action”

Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.