DOCTORS vowed yesterday to press on with a ballot for strike action despite a cynical last-ditch pay offer by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

The British Medical Association (BMA) accused Mr Hunt of “megaphone diplomacy” in the row over the imposition of new contracts that would enforce seven-day weeks and a huge pay cut for staff from next summer.

Having threatened to impose the contracts if doctors refuse to sign up, Mr Hunt made a deliberately public 11th-hour offer of an 11 per cent pay rise this week.

He claimed that just 1 per cent of doctors would lose pay and that maximum working hours would fall from 91 to 72 per week under the new deal.

But BMA junior doctors committee chairman Johann Malawana explained that the offered increase in basic pay was misleading.

“While in the short term existing junior doctors may have their pay protected, protections will only exist for a limited time,” he said.

“Without the reasonable assurances junior doctors require, the BMA has been left with little option but to continue with plans to ballot members on industrial action.

“This is not a decision we take lightly. However, the government’s refusal to work with us through genuine negotiations and its continued threat to impose an unsafe and unfair contract leaves us with no alternative.”

The BMA has issued members with papers for a strike ballot that will run until November 18.

A Department of Health spokesman burbled: “We have put out a firm offer that protects the pay of every doctor working legal hours while actually increasing pay for the vast majority.”