JUNIOR doctors in England have voted overwhelmingly to take strike action over pay, their union the British Medical Association (BMA) announced today.

Almost 37,000 members of the union took part in the ballots with 98 per cent saying they were in favour of striking, which the BMA said will be a three-day action.

The vote is the largest turnout for a ballot of doctors by the BMA, and a record number of junior doctors voted for strike action.

BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “The government has only itself to blame, standing by in silent indifference as our members are forced to take this difficult decision.”

The ballot announcement came as thousands of ambulance workers in England and Wales struck again in the long-running dispute over pay and staffing numbers.

Ambulance technician Kyle Warner, on the GMB picket line outside the East Midlands Ambulance Service’s Gorse Hill station in Leicester, said: “The NHS is crumbling.

“The government clearly isn’t listening, they’re not wanting to put the funding in that it needs or [funding] the extended healthcare system in general, which is just crippling us.

“The waits that we’ve had at hospital in recent times.. [are] unsafe for the patients [and] for members of staff having to look after those patients. [Patients] need the doctors, the nurses, the services in the hospital to get them better, not [to be] getting worse while they’re stuck on an ambulance.”

GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison accused the government of being tin-eared, adding: “It’s been over a month since the government engaged in any meaningful dialogue: they are missing in action and refuse to talk pay.”

BMA chairman Professor Philip Banfield accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of being thoughtless and bellicose in his refusal to find a workable agreement with NHS staff over pay and conditions.

Speaking at a young doctors’ conference in Bristol ahead of the ballot results, he said Mr Sunak and Health Secretary Steve Barclay are “standing on the precipice of a historic mistake.”

He said that refusing to enter meaningful negotiations with trade unions means the government is guaranteeing escalation, while thinking ministers can stay silent and wait it out is reckless.

Prof Banfield said junior doctors deserve better and accused the government of letting patients down.

Mr Barclay said it was deeply disappointing that junior doctors in England had voted for strike action.