Junior doctors planning five-day walkouts

JUNIOR doctors are considering holding week-long strikes once a month in the latest round of industrial action over their new contracts.

Strikes from 8am to 5pm five days in a row are among the options being looked at by the British Medical Association. The first walkout could be as early as mid-September, according to leaked documents seen by the Daily

Mail, and could continue every month until the end of the year. So far junior doctors have only staged strikes lasting up to 48 hours.

Earlier this month, Ellen McCourt, who leads the BMA’s junior doctors’ committee, said a request had been made for the union’s council to authorise “a rolling programme of escalated industrial action beginning in early September”.

But the Government has said the union is “playing politics” and putting patients at risk. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has said the new contract will be imposed from October, after junior doctors rejected a deal negotiated by the BMA and the Government.

The two sides have been locked in a battle over the new contract, which would end premium rates of pay for weekend work.

The last strike took place in April, with junior doctors in accident and emergency, maternity and paediatric units walking out for the first time in the history of the NHS.

A BMA spokesman said: “Junior doctors have been clear in their rejection of Jeremy Hunt’s imposed contract. It should come as no surprise that BMA Council are discussing the issue of further industrial action. But at this stage, no decisions have been made.”

A decision will be made today after a meeting of the BMA council, with the five-day strikes one option. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “The BMA should be putting patients first, not playing politics in a way that will be immensely damaging for vulnerable patients.”