Junior doctors to strike in England on 13 to 15 March

Junior doctors in England will strike on 13, 14 and 15 March, the British Medical Association has announced.

They want a pay increase to make up for 15 years of inflation.

The BMA says junior doctors have been left with no choice after the health secretary "refused to attend" a meeting to negotiate on pay.

Downing Street said the strike action was "disappointing" and Steve Barclay had recently met the union to discuss what was fair and affordable.

The three-day strike, starting and finishing at 07:00, will see junior doctors walk out of both routine and emergency care. Junior doctors can withdraw from life-and-limb emergency care but their employer then has to find other staff to cover for them.

The term "junior doctors" covers everyone who has just graduated from medical school through to those with many years' experience on the front line.

Overall, they account for more than 40% of the medical workforce.

Nearly 48,000 junior doctors working across hospitals and in the community were eligible to vote in a recent strike ballot, with more than 36,000 voting for action.

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The BMA union says junior doctors are "demoralised, angry and no longer willing to work for wages that have seen a real terms decline of over 26% in the past 15 years".

They said this, together with "the stress and exhaustion of working in an NHS crisis" had brought them to this moment.

"We have not been told why we have not been offered intensive negotiations nor what we need to do for the government to begin negotiations with us.

"We are left with no option but to proceed with this action," the BMA junior doctors' committee said.

Mr Barclay said it was "deeply disappointing" that some union members had voted for strike action.

Ministers say junior doctors' pay had increased by a cumulative 8.2% since 2019-20, and a higher pay band had been introduced for the most experienced staff and rates for night shifts increased.

The last time junior doctors went on strike was in 2016, over a new contract that had been introduced.

During the 2016 strike, consultants stepped in but this meant a huge amount of pre-planned treatments such as knee and hip replacements had to be cancelled.