Three-day junior doctors strike should not harm patient safety, British Medical Association says

Dr Mark Porter says NHS managers are being given time to plan

People have until Monday to reply to the NHS mandate consultation (Getty)

A three-day strike threatened by junior doctors over the Government’s plans to change their contracts could be conducted without harming patient safety, the British Medical Association has said.

Dr Mark Porter, chair of the BMA’s council, said the association was giving NHS bosses time to plan for the event of a junior doctor strike.

“We have no intention of endangering patients, which is why we’re giving the service time to plan for running a service when junior doctors aren’t there,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme

“I don’t think that it’s going to be impossible to keep patients safe and to run proper emergency services, even in the complete absence of junior doctors.

“That of course is one of the dilemmas about doctors taking industrial action – we don’t do it lightly at all – but the point is to keep patients safe while exerting pressure on employers on the dispute that we’re in.”

He noted that while junior doctors would not be working other doctors like consultants would be available.

Dr Sarah Wollaston, a Conservative MP who chairs the health committee, however told the same programme that the strike was “far too extreme” and “and absolute disgrace”.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, previously claimed that industrial action would harm vulnerable patients and accused the BMA of giving junior doctors poor advice.

Jeremy Hunt has told the BMA that strike action ‘would harm vulnerable patients’ (Getty)

Mr Hunt wants to change junior doctor contracts to reduce pay for doctors working the very longest hours.

He has said other junior doctors would not be worse off from the changes, which involve reductions in payments for working anti-social hours by re-defining what constitutes anti-social.

The minister claimed the changes would amount to an 11 per cent pay rise for most junior doctors. However, an analysis has shown that an increase in hours doctors would be expected to work could effectively render the change a 26 per cent pay cut.

Doctors also say the changes will endanger patients by encouraging mangers to overwork doctors and that anti-social hours payments were introduced in the 1990s in order to disincentive unsafe working patterns.

Both the BMA and Mr Hunt have repeatedly accused each other of refusing to come back to the negotiating table after talks broke down.

Junior doctors have signed up to the BMA en masse over the last few months and have taken part in a number of street demonstrations and social media campaigns. 30,000 are now represented by the BMA, which acts as both a professional association and trade union.

The ballot is for a rolling programme of industrial action. Doctors would initially provide only emergency care for 24 hours on Tuesday 1 December; this action would be followed by two all-out stoppages on Tuesday 8 December and Wednesday 16 December.

Dr Porter said such action was “unprecedented” by doctors in the UK, though similar stoppages had occurred in other countries with “despotic” management practices.