COMMENT: A junior doctor explains why the strikes are needed

This month's strike action by junior doctors has been called off, because doctors and the BMA agreed with hospitals they didn't have enough notice to make plans to keep patients safe during the first action.

James Haddock is a junior doctor based at Walsall Manor Hospital.

Patient safety is always the first thing on doctors' minds – that's our job – and unlike this Government, we'd never play politics with people's lives, writes junior doctor James Haddock.

But don't be fooled, we're not backing down in our dispute with Jeremy Hunt and the Department of Health. The strike action planned for October is set to go ahead, with more to follow in November and December and perhaps beyond.

As patients, as parents of patients, and as children and grand-children of patients, people will no doubt be worried about the strikes, and will want to know from local doctors why we think our industrial action is justified.

The first thing to say is that this fight with the Government isn't over a pay-rise. No-one in the BMA is campaigning for that. I think I get paid well enough for the job I do.

The whole mess started a year ago when, in fact, the Government revealed they wanted to give us a pay-cut for working over weekends and late into the evenings, so they could deliver their trumped-up soundbite of a seven-day-NHS.

Over the last 10 years we have had our pay restrained, our pensions raided, and our on-call accommodation taken away from us. Like lots of professional people in public service – not to mention the hard grafters on the shop floors of factories and supermarkets – we've been asked again and again to work harder and for longer, in exchange for less and less.

The truth is we're at breaking point, and so this time we decided enough was enough; we grew a backbone and said 'no'. No to pay cuts, no to more hours, no to more anti-social work.

We already work our socks off around the clock to look after people 24/7 in hospital, covering gaps in the rotas because doctors are already leaving the UK – and medicine altogether – in droves. We love our jobs, but would be lying if we said we weren't stretched.

For those of us working on the frontline we can see that the underfunding and under-resourcing of the NHS by this government is taking its toll.

It often seems that the only thing holding it altogether is the goodwill and tremendous talent of these front-line workers – doctors, nurses, health care assistants, clerks, domestic staff and porters – who every day go above and beyond their duties to keep our patients safe and the NHS ticking along.

This is why we thought, and still do think, this new contract is unsafe. It threatens to break that goodwill. It threatens to drive even more doctors out of the NHS, particularly part-time workers, who will be suffering the biggest pay-cuts.

If that happens, already patchy rotas will start to collapse. Closures of life-saving A&Es, of paediatric and maternity services – like those at Redditch and Banbury – will increase at pace.

Until, that is, there's no longer a national health service left. You can forget a seven-day elective service; we'd struggle to staff a one or two-day routine service.

As if the very future existence of the NHS wasn't cause enough for us to protest, there is an even bigger principle here that we are fighting for. A democratic principle that protects us all from exploitation. At the beginning of summer, the BMA balloted us on whether we wanted to accept the Government's last offer.

We overwhelmingly voted to reject that contract as not good enough – we are still facing a pay-cut for our weekend and night-time work, and part-time trainees are to get the largest pay-cuts of all. Yet Jeremy Hunt ignored this democratic decision and has announced he is going to impose the contract anyway.

If we allow Jeremy Hunt and the current Government to get away with this, we are admitting public workers don't have a right to negotiate their terms and conditions, and unions are powerless to stop governments from imposing upon workers whatever terms and conditions they like.

This is a red line we must all stand on, and never allow a government of any colour to cross.

What do we want? If Jeremy Hunt calls off the unsafe imposition of this contract, and demonstrates reasonableness in the same way the BMA did by delaying its strikes, we can avoid any more industrial action.

Which do they value more? Their pride, or NHS patients?