MEDICS have urged ministers to come to the negotiating table by using conciliation service Acas or face further waves of industrial action.

The warning came as junior doctors and medical consultants launched a 72-hour walk out – their longest period of joint strike action to date. 

BMA consultants committee chairman Dr Vishal Sharma said that he has written to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, giving him four weeks to enter formal talks.

“We have also indicated that we are willing to involve Acas to conciliate a resolution,” he said.

But the letter stated that if a deal is not met by then, more strikes will be set for November and December.

On the first day of the industrial action, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt attacked the strikes as “completely unacceptable.”

Mr Hunt said: “Doctors are choosing to strike and what I would say to them is: ‘We’ve offered you an above-inflation award that wasn’t decided by the government, it was decided by an independent pay review body.'”

A spokesman for the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association, whose junior doctor members are also walking out this week, said: “Rather than sitting down to end the strikes, the Chancellor and Prime Minister seem content hiding behind the forlorn fig leaf of a pay review body which has lost the faith of the medical profession.

“This dispute is about staffing and savage long-term pay decline. The only way out of industrial action is for the government to begin negotiations, acknowledge longstanding grievances, and strike a longer-term deal.”

Dr Helen Neary, deputy chair of the BMA consultants committee, told the Times Radio that in real-terms, doctors “are working for free in effect for four months of the year.

“What we’re asking for is for reform of our independent review body as they should be the ones who should be setting what pay doctors should get, and the government has continued to interfere with that process,” she said.

On Twitter, BMA Consultants quashed claims that the pay offer was decided by an “independent review body,” maintaining that the review body on doctors’ and dentists’ remuneration is not independent. 

It wrote: “The government sets its remit and appoints its members. As a Conservative backbencher said earlier this year, the government ‘basically rigs’ the process.”

Responding to the BMA’s offer to pause further strikes for talks with Acas, NHS Providers chief executive Sir Julian Hartley said: “Trust leaders hope this olive branch from consultants to the government could be a first step to ending disruptive strikes.

“Something has to give. We can’t go into another ‘full on’ winter with the threat of more strikes hanging over the NHS.”

Acas chief conciliator Marina Glasgow said: “We have a team of experts who are well prepared and ready to help with the consultants and junior doctors’ disputes.

“Acas has decades of experience in resolving disputes, which includes helping the various sides look at options for a compromise.”

Doctors from across the nation are set to rally outside the Tory conference in Manchester later today.