Earlier this year junior doctors voted with a significant majority to reject the government’s final offer on their new contract.

It is a contract, which will worsen the already dangerous levels of understaffing, fails to provide adequate protection against working unsafe hours and which will enshrine a gender pay gap within the profession. Crucially it is a “cost-neutral” contract aiming to stretch five days worth of resources over seven which the government's own advisers have stated is not workable.

The health service is already in the worst financial crisis in its history due to deliberate underfunding coupled with the alarming waste of taxpayers' money which we are seeing siphoned off into the private sector. Junior doctors' concerns are that the service cannot be stretched even further with no extra investment and no extra staff.

No health worker wants to take industrial action, but the alternative which is to allow this government to force through a contract which puts patient care and the sustainability of a publicly funded NHS at risk, is worse.

The priority must be the defence of an adequately resourced NHS where safe and equitable service provision is at the centre of fresh contract negotiations for doctors.