JUNIOR doctors have begun a five-day strike which they say is the longest walkout of its kind in the history of the NHS.

Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) in England mounted picket lines outside hospitals from 7am today amid ongoing protests over health service pay.

The action coincided with separate walkout by Unite members at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London over pay, while hospital consultants and radiographers are due to take industrial action later this month.

In a statement, BMA junior doctors committee co-chairmen Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “Today marks the start of the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history, but this is still not a record that needs to go into the history books. 

“We can call this strike off today if the UK government will simply follow the example of the government in Scotland and drop their nonsensical precondition of not talking whilst strikes are announced and produce an offer which is credible to the doctors they are speaking with.

“The government’s refusal to talk with junior doctors in England who have strikes planned is out of keeping with all norms of industrial action.

“Doctors have a right to expect that, as in Scotland and as in many other recent industrial disputes, talks will continue right up to the last minute to try and reach a deal without the need to strike.

“The complete inflexibility we see from the UK government today is baffling, frustrating and ultimately destructive for everyone who wants waiting lists to go down and NHS staffing numbers to go up.”

NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery warned that the long-running row was “fraying the fabric” of the health service and had led to more than 651,000 routine procedures and appointments being rescheduled.

But Health Secretary Steve Barclay refused today to resume talks until the BMA called off its “disappointing” strikes and “shows willingness to move significantly from their current pay demands.

“A pay demand of 35 per cent or more is unreasonable and risks fuelling inflation, which makes everyone poorer,” he said.

Polling by YouGov has shown that public support for strikes has remained consistent since the beginning of the year, with three in five backing the struggles of nurses and ambulance workers.