Hospital doctors would go on strike or quit the NHS if the government pursued plans to create a new post of junior hospital consultant, their leaders warned today.
The health secretary, Alan Milburn, plans to create a new "sub-consultant" grade after senior hospital doctors in England and Wales decisively rejected the proposed new contract against the advice of the British Medical Association.
But Paul Thorpe, the chairman of the BMA's junior doctors committee, warned that such a move would be "rank folly" and provoke the medical profession take more militant opposition.
Mr Thorpe accused Mr Milburn of "throwing his teddies out of the pram because he's got a bloody nose" from consultants in England and Wales.
Mr Milburn reportedly regards the new grade of consultant as a means of achieving the key aims of the proposed contact because they would be fully committed to NHS work. He will also unveil bigger bonuses for doctors who do most of their work for the NHS.
While Mr Milburn is expected to consult on these plans, the Financial Times reported today that he does not intend to negotiate with the BMA after it failed to deliver a vote in favour of the new contract.
The FT quoted a "close colleague" of the health secretary as saying: "What is the point? Who would we negotiate with?"
Mr Thorpe told SocietyGuardian.co.uk: "Doctors fear the contract would allow the Department of Health to force them to meet political rather than clinical priorities.
"If he [Mr Milburn] takes the attitude 'I'm not going to talk to anyone', can't he see that's entirely indicative of why we've rejected the contract?
"If he wants a really militant medical profession then let him continue to take this path. But it seems to be rank folly."
The hospital doctor again floated the idea of consultants forming chambers, like barristers' chambers, to sell their services to the NHS and added they would consider taking industrial action if Mr Milburn tried to force through the new contract and the new sub-grade.
Mr Thorpe denied that a chambers system would tie consultants into more rigid contracts with the NHS.
He warned: "If trusts think they can dictate the terms they're living in cloud-cuckoo-land. I think it will be the other way round as we have a shortage of doctors in the NHS."
But a BMA spokeswoman questioned where the new junior consultants would come from, given staff and student shortages.
"There has been talk within the royal colleges [of medicine] that the plan involves shortening the length of their training. That greatly concerns us and we wouldn't want them to be held back from full consultant status."
The BMA is urgently seeking a meeting with the health secretary to discuss his plans in light of the 2-1 vote against the contact in England and Wales.
