JUNIOR doctors across England will take part in the longest strike in NHS history from today as they launch their 144-hour action.

The action begins at 7am and ends at the same time on Tuesday January 9, and comes at one of the busiest times for the health service as it faces increased pressure from winter viruses.

The Department of Health and Social Care urged the British Medical Association (BMA) yesterday to “call off their strikes and come back to the negotiating table.”

But BMA junior doctors’ committee co-chairs Dr Rob Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said the government could have put forward a credible offer, even “at this late hour.”

The BMA said junior doctors’ pay has been cut by more than a quarter since 2008.

Over the summer, the government gave junior doctors in England an average rise of 8.8 per cent, but professionals said the increase was not enough and are calling for a pathway to full pay restoration to reverse the steep decline in pay since 2008-09.

Junior doctors from the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association union will also join colleagues on picket lines.

Dr Laurenson and Dr Trivedi said in a statement: “We spent the holiday period hoping we would get the ‘final offer’ that the Health Secretary had promised us last year.

“Sadly, we have received no such offer despite repeatedly saying we would meet for talks any time over Christmas.

“We will continue to offer to meet throughout these coming strikes. All we need is a credible offer we can put to members and we can call off these strikes.

“This strike marks another unhappy record for the NHS — the longest single walkout in its history — but there is no need for any records to fall: we can call off this strike now if we get an offer from government that we can put to members.”

NHS Providers said the “unprecedented” action will lead to delays in care for thousands of patients.

The organisation, which represents NHS trusts, also called for a swift resolution to the dispute as it warned of the threat of other health workers taking more strike action.

The NHS has warned that the strike action, which could see up to half of the doctors in England walk out, could lead to “the most difficult start to the year the NHS has ever faced.”

Campaign groups have backed the union action.

“We must hold the government to account for any way this affects patient safety — it is them who need to return to the negotiating table, not the doctors,” Best for Britain posted on X.

Just Treatment said: “There is no greater threat to patient safety than poorly paid, overworked and overstretched staff.

“That’s why our supporters back the junior doctors and call on the government to end this crisis by giving them the raise they deserve, and the NHS needs.”

Every Doctor UK chief executive Dr Julia Grace Patterson said: “This attitude coming from many people — that NHS staff have somehow signed up to a life of servitude where they put up with whatever the government throws at them — is deeply wrong and deeply worrying.

“NHS workers are not the property of the state. They are people.”