NHS junior doctors back call for three walkouts

PATIENTS are facing three weeks of disruption after junior doctors voted to go on strike during the run-up to Christmas.

Tens of thousands of operations and hospital appointments in England will be cancelled as a result of three walkouts planned for next month.

A total of 28,316 junior doctors took part in the ballot, of whom 99 per cent voted in favour of staging industrial action and 98 per cent for an all-out strike in protest over new contracts being imposed by Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

These would impose conditions that would cut the amount junior doctors can earn for working ‘unsocial’ hours on the evenings and weekends.

To offset the losses, Mr Hunt offered them a 11 per cent basic pay rise, but this was rejected by doctors’ union the BMA.

Yesterday the BMA offered to hold talks through Acas, the Advi-

‘Busiest time of the year’

sory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. But Mr Hunt refused, saying: ‘I don’t rule out the involvement of third parties in the future but for now the right thing to do is to call off the strike.’

There are less than two weeks for them to reach an agreement before an estimated 0,000 junior doctors stage their first walkout.

This will be a 2 -hour period of emergency care only. It will be followed by two all-out strikes where junior doctors will desert wards for the first time in NHS history.

Patients in Scotland will not be affected.

They are expected to cause at least three weeks’ of disruption, with operations cancelled in the days leading up to walkouts and afterwards to clear the backlog.

On average, there are 28,000 non-urgent operations and 157,000 consultations in hospitals every day. But December is typically one of the busiest times of the year for urgent cases.