Junior doctors are set to go on strike again for five days, after the Government “failed to meet pay offer deadline”, the British Medical Association (BMA) has announced.
The industrial action will take place from February 24 to 28, with the union demanding a 35 per cent pay increase.
The BMA said: “In a show of goodwill, the BMA provided the Health Secretary with an option to delay further strike action.
“She was asked to extend the current strike mandate for a short period – and thus allow talks to continue with the aim to achieve a resolution for this year’s dispute.
Junior doctors are taking strike action from February 24 to 28
PA“Disappointingly, she declined to agree to extending the mandate."
The BMA said the strikes could still be cancelled “if a credible offer is made”.
The walkout will be the 10th strike by junior doctors since March 2023, with the medics asking for a pay rise to compensate for pay cuts going back to 2008.
It follows their six-day strike in January, the longest in the history of the NHS, which saw around 100,000 appointments cancelled.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Junior doctors and medical consultant members of the British Medical Association (BMA) on the picket linePAThe Government gave junior doctors an 8.8 per cent pay rise last summer and an extra three per cent was offered during the last round of negotiations but was rejected by the British Medical Association (BMA).
BMA junior doctors’ committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said in a statement: “We have made every effort to work with the Government in finding a fair solution to this dispute whilst trying to avoid strike action.
“Even yesterday, we were willing to delay further strike action in exchange for a short extension of our current strike mandate.
“Had the Health Secretary agreed to this, an act of good faith on both sides, talks could have gone ahead without more strikes. Sadly, the Government declined.
“The glacial speed of progress with the Government is frustrating and incomprehensible.”
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins says that the new strikes show that the BMA are not 'ready to be reasonable'
PAThey said that it took 20 days before a meeting was offered, despite the Health Secretary Victoria Atkins promising to speak to the union “20 minutes” after the strikes had ended.
Atkins said: "This action called by the BMA Junior Doctor Committee does not signal that they are ready to be reasonable.
"We urged them to put an offer to their members, but they refused.
"Five days of action will put enormous pressure on the NHS and is not in the spirit of constructive dialogue."
Despite almost one million operations and appointments being cancelled due to the strike action, which has cost the NHS around £2billion, the most recent polling by Ipsos found that 53 per cent of the public back the doctors.