Junior doctors are to stage fresh strike action in England for a 10th time after talks between their union and the government broke down again.
Ministers, health officials and representatives from the British Medical Association (BMA) had been locked in negotiations for weeks since last month’s record six-day stoppage, trying to find a resolution to the pay dispute.
But the Guardian understands a last-ditch meeting on Thursday between Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, and the BMA failed to result in any immediate solution to end the stoppages. As a result, the BMA’s junior doctors’ committee has voted unanimously for another five days of strikes this month.
Junior doctors in England will strike from 7am on 24 February to midnight on 28 February.
The decision was announced a day after the latest NHS figures revealed that 7.6m health treatments were waiting to be carried out in England at the end of December, relating to 6.37 million patients.
The announcement from the BMA will alarm medical leaders and NHS bosses, who are becoming increasingly concerned about the deteriorating health of many of those stuck on waiting lists.
The Guardian revealed last month a warning from health officials that thousands of cancer patients could die early if ministers and junior doctors did not urgently resolve their bitter pay row.
On Thursday, the latest performance statistics showed more than a third of cancer patients in England were facing potentially deadly delays, with thousands of people forced to wait months to begin treatment.
Earlier this week Rishi Sunak was accused of personally holding up a deal to end doctors’ strikes despite warnings from the health department and NHS England that waiting lists would continue to soar unless the dispute was resolved.
Sources said it had been made “abundantly and repeatedly” clear to the prime minister there would be no progress on his pledge to drive down NHS waiting lists until a deal was struck. The government said the reports were untrue.
On Monday, Sunak admitted he had failed on his pledge to cut NHS waiting lists after months of strikes by NHS staff. Last year he made cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment one of the five key priorities of his leadership.
Last month’s six-day strike was the ninth time junior doctors have stopped working in the last year and the longest to hit the health service since it was founded in 1948.
With no end in sight to the dispute between the government and junior doctors, who make up about half of the medical workforce, oncologists and cancer leaders said the stalemate was needlessly reducing the survival chances of sick patients.
Junior doctors in England are now being asked if they want to continue striking in their long-running dispute over pay. The BMA is re-balloting members on extending stoppages for another six months beyond February.
The current mandate runs out at the end of this month. Unions involved in disputes have to re-ballot their members every six months on whether to continue with strikes.
If there is a yes vote, the mandate for strike action in England would be extended to September.
Last month the consultant members of the BMA narrowly rejected the government’s revised pay offer by 51.1%. The deal would have seen medics get a pay rise of between 6% and 19.6%.
Strikes in the NHS over the past 15 months are understood to have a financial cost of more than £1.5bn. Stoppages by various staff groups including doctors, nurses, paramedics and physiotherapists have led to more than 1.3 million appointments, procedures and operations being rescheduled.
