Health charities have made a last-ditch appeal to Jeremy Hunt and the doctors’ union to resume peace talks in order to halt this week’s strike by junior medics.
A coalition of 36 charities have written to the health secretary and the British Medical Association warning that walkouts by junior doctors are now so common that they are becoming “normalised”.
They urge Hunt to drop his threat to impose an unpopular new contract on England’s 45,000 junior doctors from August and ask the BMA to call off its series of strikes. Hospitals will have to cancel non-urgent operations and some outpatient clinics during the 48-hour stoppage that is due to begin on Wednesday at 8am.
“We deplore the emergence of a situation where strike action in the NHS becomes normalised due to the entrenched positions of both parties. Whatever the state of public opinion, there will be longer-term damage to public trust and confidence in the NHS,” the letter says.
“We ask both sides to remove the impediments to resuming talks and to get back around the negotiating table. Patients and the public deserve no less.”
Signatories include Mind, Action for Sick Children, Epilepsy Action, Bliss, Men’s Health Forum and Sue Ryder.
The charities also warn that junior doctors’ planned escalation of their action to remove cover even from life-or-death areas such as A&E and intensive care in their first all-out strikes on 26 and 27 April will put patients’ safety at risk.
The Department of Health said Hunt still planned to impose the contract, despite growing fears that it will exacerbate a widespread shortage of doctors. It said: “The escalation of strike action by the BMA will inevitably put patients in harm’s way. If the BMA had agreed to negotiate on Saturday pay, as they promised to do through Acas in November, we’d have a negotiated agreement by now.”
Meanwhile, more doctors’ leaders have joined the growing chorus of concern that the new contract will discriminate against young female doctors.
Dr David Richmond, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the government’s own equality impact assessment of the contract stated that parts of it “impact disproportionately on women”.
He said: “The new contract will require junior doctors to work more weekends and will cut Saturday pay in exchange for a basic pay rise of 13.5%. It will also mean doctors no longer get automatic pay increases for time served, hitting the salaries of those who take time off, including those on maternity leave.
“Female doctors bear the brunt of childcare and caring responsibilities and they make up the majority of those working part-time; the loss of incremental pay progression will hit less-than-full-time trainees the hardest.”
