Junior doctors are plotting week-long strikes every month for rest of year

Want to walk out from 8am to 5pm for five straight days from next month

They are locked in a continual bitter row with ministers over new contracts

Junior doctors are plotting week-long strikes every month for the rest of the year.

They would walk out from 8am to 5pm for five straight days, according to leaked papers.

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The first strike could start on September 12 – causing unprecedented havoc and the loss of thousands of scheduled operations.

Since January junior doctors have been locked in a bitter row with ministers over a new contract that will see them paid less for weekend work.

Junior doctors in Britain are plotting week-long strikes every month for the rest of the year and plan to walk out from 8am to 5pm for five straight days, according to leaked papers

The five strikes they have staged so far were limited to 24 or 48 hours and week-long walkouts would be much more disruptive. Hospitals will be overstretched in the run-up to winter and the strikers might forfeit any remaining public sympathy.

Drawn up by the British Medical Association’s committee of junior doctors, the plan will be put to a vote of senior officials today.

The leaked papers reveal the committee wants a ‘rolling programme of escalated action’ this autumn. Junior doctors would probably abandon A&E, intensive care and maternity units. Tens of thousands of routine operations and appointments would need to be cancelled.

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The document says the committee accepts there would be a ‘regrettable impact on patient care’. But it adds that this is the whole ‘purpose of the action’ – to create pressure and disruption for the NHS – to ensure junior doctors get an ‘acceptable deal’.

The BMA’s Council, which consists of around 30 of its most senior members, will vote on whether to press ahead with the action at the meeting later today.

The 13-page document – marked ‘confidential’ – states that the Government intends to impose the new contract on junior doctors from October. It says: ‘The JDC’s executive team’s view is that any industrial action should therefore take place as soon as possible.’

The BMA wants to stage five-day strikes every month until Christmas which are expected to cause the cancellation of 125,000 operations and one million appointments

The document adds: ‘The proposal for Council’s consideration and vote is for a rolling programme of escalated industrial action beginning with five consecutive weekdays in September (8am-5pm, full withdrawal of labour) followed by further five-day walkouts in each month to the end of the year.’

Later, in a section headed ‘patient harm’, it acknowledges that ‘the risk of such an incident increases considerably with four full weeks of full withdrawal’ – one each month from September to December. ‘The level of cancellation of procedures and patient disruption would increase dramatically,’ it adds.

Joyce Robins, of the campaign group Patient Concern, said: ‘What they are proposing puts people’s lives in danger and you don’t expect that behaviour from doctors. People will die and people will suffer, and for what?

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‘The public has been misled over this, it has been made to sound as though junior doctors are living in penury and being denied their rights, but actually they have already got most of what they asked for. It’s really very upsetting.’

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘As doctors’ representatives, the BMA should be putting patients first not playing politics in a way that will be immensely damaging for vulnerable patients.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (pictured) decided to impose the new contracts

‘What’s more, the BMA must be the first union in history to call for strike action against a deal they themselves negotiated and said was a good one. Co-operation not confrontation is the way forward to make sure patients get the best treatment.’

A senior Tory source described the proposals as ‘wholly irresponsible’ and said they would ‘undermine any public support’.

Ministers had hoped to have finally settled the dispute in May when they agreed a provisional new contract with senior BMA officials. But this was later rejected by the 50,000 junior doctors who are members of the union in a vote in July.

To their dismay, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt decided to impose the contract regardless and it is due to take effect in October.

Earlier this month one of the BMA committee’s most militant members, Yannis Gourtsoyannis, urged his fellow medics to dust off their picket armbands.

A BMA spokesman said: ‘Junior doctors have been clear in their rejection of Jeremy Hunt’s imposed contract. It should come as no surprise that BMA Council are discussing the issue of further industrial action. But at this stage, no decisions have been made.’

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The document says a ballot on industrial action last November is still ‘legally valid’ and there is no need for a new vote.