A ballot asking doctors to vote on whether to strike over the junior contract will open on 5 November, the British Medical Association has confirmed.
The contract proposed by the health secretary would see "sociable working hours", for which junior doctors are paid a standard rate, change from 7am–7pm Monday–Friday to 7am–10pm Monday–Saturday.
The proposed contract would also remove incremental pay rises, with increases instead based on moving through the stages of training and taking on more responsibility. Doctors have said the new contract also removes safeguards that mean hospitals can be penalised for overworking juniors.
NHS staff, patients, and members of the public have said they consider the changes unfair. On Saturday, almost 20,000 members of the medical community and its supporters protested against the contract in London, Belfast, and Nottingham.
Can barely move its soooo crowded! #JuniorProtest @P_Whitford_MP @sarahwollaston #istandwithjohann #NHS
In September, when it was originally announced that doctors would be balloted over industrial action, the BMA said in a statement:
This is not a decision we have taken lightly, and we are fully aware of the implications, but such is the strength of feeling – not only within the committee, but also from junior doctors across the country – that we believe that this is the right thing to do to defend the current and next generations of junior doctors.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that the BMA has misled junior doctors over the new contract, and as the ballot was confirmed for next month, health minister Ben Gummer echoed Hunt's sentiment.
"I am disappointed that the BMA has decided to put patients at risk by asking hardworking, responsible junior doctors to strike, without even negotiating on their behalf," he said in a statement following the announcement. "We have already given absolute assurances that the paybill won't be cut and that hours will go down not up. Far from being left with no option but taking industrial action, the Department and the Royal Colleges have continually urged the BMA to come back to the table since they first walked away last year."
Last week Dr Johann Malawana, chair of the BMA's junior doctors' committee, told BuzzFeed News that striking was a necessary last resort: "We have to do this to try and make them listen, because if we cannot deliver the health service, then that's a fundamental issue for society."
Dr Sundeep Grewal, who has been instrumental in organising the recent junior doctors' protests agreed that, "as junior doctors we absolutely do not want to strike," emphasising that the most important thing to doctors was taking care of patients.
He said that a strike could be averted if Hunt was willing to enter into meaningful negotiations, something the BMA has been unable to do when "in order to have a negotiation, we have to pre-agree to things that we just don't think are safe or fair," according to Malawana.
Grewal said he was "in no doubt that there will definitely be a strike. In fact, I am certain there will be several strikes because the level of anger is unprecedented."
He added: "Jeremy Hunt is mistaken if he thinks that Saturday's protest was a one-off, and if this will be a one-off strike. We don't want to strike but we will to prevent the enforced implementation of a contract that is bad for patient safety and bad for doctors."
The BMA urged members who are eligible to vote to take part before the close of the ballot on 18 November.