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Junior doctors in England will take a second day of action on 10th of February, after contract talks ended without agreement.

The reasons for such action, which is rare (the last juniors strike was in 1975 over similar issues), go deeper than pay. And what must not be forgotten is that 98% of the 37,000 juniors balloted by the British Medical Association (BMA) agreed on a full-out strike.

The blame for another junior doctor’s strike lies with Jeremy Hunt, who combines incompetence with spin. Health secretary devoted time and energy smearing doctors and playing politics, when he should have been finding a just and fair solution.

Junior doctors are the backbone of our hospitals, but they have been left feeling demoralized and offended by comments made by Ministers which suggest they don’t already work seven-days a week and dispute is about pay.

(Image: Reuters)

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Junior doctors are angry that the proposed new contract will extend the normal working pattern to weekends, so there will be no difference in their pay if they worked on a weekday or a weekend.

And as anyone will know it takes more than doctors to operate a fully functioning department, but the government is insistent on pushing their flawed 7 day working on the back of this juniors contract.

The notion that it is dangerous for patients to be admitted during a weekend because of increased mortality and the lack of doctors has been challenged by senior medics time and time again, and yet Jeremy Hunt and now David Cameron continue to peddle this untruth.

Alarming the public so that they get onto the politicians side is a worrying tactic, because as the government will well know the BMA is in support of a 7 day service but has asked repeatedly for the government to define what that would look like and how it will be funded.

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The junior doctors must always be seen as one cog in the wheel, and not what 7 day services should be built on.

The public and politicians must not doubt that junior doctors have a deep commitment to the NHS and their patients. The NHS is in their DNA. The last thing they want to do is to cause disruption to patient care but they feel this is now their only option.

Trying to bully the juniors to accept unsafe working conditions is not going to cut any ice, and much of the goodwill that juniors had is now rapidly receding.

No amount of rhetoric on the airwaves will sway the public who see the government attacking our much respected junior doctors who already work tirelessly 24/7 in our NHS, often beyond their contracted hours of duty.

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In past three months, the General Medical Council received several thousand requests for certificates allowing doctors to work overseas. Does Hunt realise that this punitive contract will result in our best juniors being creamed off by lucrative contracts abroad?

Furthermore, it will put many bright youngsters off studying medicine. The inevitable effect of this is the much greater risk to healthcare provision and patient safety throughout England, with the daunting prospect that it would take a generation to reverse the damage.

Before the last election, David Cameron promised 'A truly seven day NHS' in his election manifesto. However, it had one major problem: he didn't have any money to fund this nor indeed has he defined what he meant by it.

The idea that the PM can conjure up an excellent week-round service by forcing already stretched junior doctors to work longer for less is a delusion. When the present service is practically on its knees, it makes no sense to stretch it further.

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Jeremy Hunt’s tactics have throughout been aggressive, self-defeatingly crude and mostly alienating. He tried – and failed – to divide juniors from their union.

If Hunt wants to resolve the dispute, he should be working with the BMA and the juniors to achieve a common goal, rather than labelling the BMA a road-block to his reforms. A divisive approach is not in his interests; nor does it serve the public.