A TORY former health minister went against his party yesterday after he declared that junior doctors’ concerns over work conditions were valid.

Dan Poulter, a former junior doctor who was in the Department of Health (DoH) when contract negotiations for the medics began last year, said their angry protests outside Westminster and across the country were understandable.

He agreed with the British Medical Association (BMA) that said the deal proposed for doctors — those below consultant level in England — could endanger patients’ lives.

The Conservative government expects junior doctors to work more weekly hours for a punishing 30 per cent salary cut from next August.

But the BMA’s first ever strike ballot is “not fundamentally about money,” Dr Poulter wrote in the Guardian, and that the contract would result in doctors having to deal with unbearable levels of stress and exhaustion.

The DoH criticised Dr Poulter’s claims as “incorrect” but the BMA backed the MP in saying he gave a “damning account” of how badly the department had handled the negotiations.

“Then there was no talk of 90-hour weeks, no talk of large numbers of junior doctors having their pay cut,” Dr Poulter said of the previous negotiations.

Doctors are now considering “voting with their feet” by leaving the NHS, Britain or the medical profession altogether, according to Johann Malawana, chairman of the BMA junior doctors committee.

Dr Claudie Sellers, an anaesthetist, warned that she would leave the profession if the new contract was imposed.“This is a line that cannot be crossed,” she added.