Today junior doctors will launch a three-day strike, ahead of a week of walkouts which will include one of the biggest days of industrial action for years.
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) will join other trade unions taking action on Budget day which will be one of the biggest single days of industrial action for years. Workers taking action include civil servants, teachers, university staff, London Underground drivers and BBC journalists.
The strike action comes after the BMA launched a campaign which said junior doctors could earn more money "serving coffee than saving patients". They claim newly qualified medics earn £14.09 an hour, less than a barista in a coffee shop, adding that junior doctors in England will have suffered a 26% real-terms cut to their pay since 2008/09.
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NHS leaders have said they are very worried that the walkout by junior doctors will take disruption caused by recent strikes to the next level, posing a risk to patient safety and setting back work to bear down on care backlogs. Talks between the Government and other health unions will continue this week, holding out hope of a breakthrough in the long-running NHS pay dispute.
Earlier this month, Jim Gardner, medical director at Liverpool University Hospitals Foundation Trust, said the strike action is "scary" but that they are "as well prepared" as they can be. The medical director warned however some services would have to be withdrawn as a result of the junior doctor strikes. He said: "Looking at lots of things that may need to step down to ensure we have capacity.
"There will be a lot of elective activity going on but there will be a step down. In a written update, chief executive James Sumner said the trust will continue to manage each planned strike via its emergency planning process, with tactical control rooms in place."
Speaking ahead of the strikes, Dr Becky Bates, a first-year junior doctor said: "I thought by being a doctor I would be able to achieve financial independence, but instead I am still completely dependent on others. With tuition fee loans, credit cards and personal loans, I've left medical school with over £100,000 debt, and now my wages are not even enough to allow me to fix my car when something goes wrong.
"I come from a single-parent family. I don't come from money, yet at 28 I am relying on my mother taking out credit card debt so I can meet these expenses. It's humiliating for me and it's not fair on her."
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters on his flight to the US: "It is very disappointing that the junior doctors' union are not engaging with the Government. We are actually having constructive dialogue with other unions who have accepted our offer to come in and talk through it.
"As you have seen with rail... they have put an offer to their members, we are having constructive dialogue with the nurses' unions and all the other healthcare unions and I would urge the junior doctors to follow suit, and accept the Government's offer to come in and have talks, the other unions have done that and we are making progress."
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