Resident doctors in England are to strike for six days next month in the ongoing row over jobs and pay, the British Medical Association has announced.

The latest round of industrial action will start just after the Easter long weekend from 7am on 7 April, the union said.

The strike will run until 6.59am on 13 April.

“We have been negotiating in good faith for weeks to try and end the simultaneous pay and jobs crises for resident doctors,” BMA Resident Doctors Committee chairman Jack Fletcher said.

“Frustratingly we had been making good progress right up until the point, in the last two weeks, when the Government began to shift the goalposts.

“As talks progressed it became clear that the money proposed for pay increases was now going to be spread over three years.

“This is combined with today’s pay review body (DDRB) recommendation of a 3.5 per cent uplift pointing to yet more years in which our pay, at best, barely treads water.

“We have made abundantly clear throughout this dispute that our aim is pay restoration, and any deal that did not move us substantially in that direction was not going to fly.”

Mr Fletcher said the Government “will need to act fast” to prevent the six-day walkout.

“We cannot ignore that, thanks to global events, economic indicators now point to years of greatly increased inflation,” he said.

“We are simply not going to put an offer to doctors that risks locking in further erosion of pay at a time when doctors continue to leave the UK for other countries.

“We are not closing the door on talks.

“We remain willing to negotiate and are eager to get a deal done if we can simply recapture the early positive spirit of negotiations.

“No strikes need to happen, but Government will need to act fast to prevent them.”

During a speech in east London earlier on Wednesday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said that the Government chose to maintain as much pre-planned care as possible during previous rounds of industrial action.

He said: “Under our predecessors, there was an acceptance that when doctors go on strike, planned operations just get cancelled, as if these were pain-free, consequence-free cancellations for patients.

“We didn’t accept that and we made the safety case for maintaining planned care, keeping 95 per cent of activity going, even during strikes.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.