Junior doctors' strike: BMA accuses ministers of causing 'fundamental breakdown of trust'

Dispute between junior doctors and Government shows no signs of abating with Mr Hunt refusing to back down over pay

Junior doctors and staff members picket outside Maudsley Hospital (Getty Images)

Prospects of a breakthrough in the dispute between junior doctors and the Government appear more distant than ever after the BMA accused ministers and NHS officials of causing “a fundamental breakdown in trust” on the first day of a wave of strike action.

Talks are to resume on Thursday aimed at preventing a second, 48-hour strike planned for the end of January. But relations between the BMA and the Government suffered another blow as the union told striking medics at a Birmingham hospital to defy a request to return to work.

As thousands of medics joined picket lines at more than 160 sites throughout England, Sandwell General Hospital asked striking doctors to report for duty because of “a surge in activity in recent days”.

The hospital later retracted the request, which appears to have been made on the basis of a letter sent by NHS England medical director NHS England Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, which said hospitals could consider re-calling striking junior doctors if they came under “exceptional” pressure.

Dr Johann Malawana, chair of the BMA’s junior doctor committee, condemned “inept and heavy-handed attempts to bully junior doctors lawfully taking industrial action back into work”.

With the first 24-hour strike due to end at 8am on Wednesday morning, negotiators on both sides prepared for talks aimed at averting two more strikes – including a full walkout from all hospital departments scheduled in February.

Mr Hunt said that the strike had been “wholly unnecessary”, but the BMA said picket lines had received high levels of public support. NHS England said that 39 per cent of junior doctors reported for duty – a figure which included doctors in emergency specialties who had not planned to strike. Overall, 3,454 inpatient and day case procedures were cancelled.

It later emerged that, despite its attempt to re-call junior doctors, Sandwell General Hospital had been forced to cancel just two per cent of non-urgent procedures and four per cent of appointments.

Dr Malawana said that while doctors regretted the disruption caused, they were fighting “for the long-term safety of patients and junior doctors’ working lives”. He said the strike was “a result of a fundamental breakdown in trust with junior doctors, for which the Government is directly responsible”.

But Mr Hunt made an impassioned defence of the Government’s plan to cut out-of-hours pay for junior doctors so hospitals could roster more doctors at weekends, saying he could not ignore studies which indicate higher mortality for patients admitted to hospital at weekends.

“We want all NHS patients to have the confidence that they will get the same high quality care every day of the week,” he said.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Government’s treatment of junior doctors had been “appalling”, accusing them of seeking to “smear them in the press”. A number of Labour MPs, including shadow Chancellor John McDonnell joined doctors on picket lines.

Nursing and midwifery unions, which could find themselves in their own dispute with the Government over out-of-hours pay as contract negotiations begin later in the year, leant messages of support to junior doctors.

The Royal College of Nursing said it felt “equally strongly about cuts in pay for those staff who have to work unsocial hours”, while the Royal College of Midwives said the proposals which had sparked the doctors’ strike were “very similar” to those facing midwives.