Further strikes have been announced by the British Medical Association (BMA) amid a dispute over pay.
Consultants in England will go on strike on Thursday and Friday. However, further dates for industrial action have been added next month in response to the Government 'imposing another real-terms pay cut' on doctors, the BMA have announced.
The strike will once again be based on Christmas Day levels of cover, meaning emergency care will still be provided. It comes after the BMA rejected the Government's 6% pay uplift for consultants last week. However, the committee claims the below inflation pay offer is "nothing short of insulting".
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Dr Vishal Sharma, BMA consultants committee chair, said: "The Government has once again imposed a savage real terms pay cut on consultants. When inflation is running at more than 11%, this is nothing short of insulting.
"Consultants have always been clear that industrial action is a last resort but in the face of a Government intent on devaluing consultants' expertise and their lack of regard for the impact this is having on the NHS, we have been left with no choice."
Consultants in England had already announced that they will take action on July 20 and 21. The BMA says this will go ahead unless the Government presented them with an offer than begins to reverse the 35% pay erosion they have experienced, as well as committing to reform the current broken pay review process.
Rishi Sunak challenged union leaders to call off strike action after offering public sector workers pay rises of up to 7%. The Prime Minister accepted the recommendations from pay review bodies, including 6.5% increases for teachers in England for 2023-24, which the education unions said would allow them to end their dispute with ministers.
However, now the BMA's consultants committee is announcing further provisional strike dates of August 24 and 25.
Dr Sharma added: "We've had our pay cut year after year, put our lives on the line during a pandemic and now are managing a record backlog of care. The Prime Minister says cutting these waiting lists is a priority but then undermines his own policy by showing he doesn't value those charged with delivering it. Cutting pay once again shows the Government's complete disregard for the profession.
"Meanwhile, there can be no better demonstration of the need to reform the pay review system for doctors than our pay review body, recommending a further real terms pay cut on top of the successive pay cuts over the last 15 years, at a point when the profession has been pushed to take industrial action and are leaving the NHS."
