Thousands of junior doctors are to go on strike across England for five days in the longest such industrial action in the history of the NHS. The unprecedented action by medics – who can have up to eight years of experience as a hospital doctor or three years in general practice – will run from 7am on 13 July until 7am on 18 July and is expected to lead to thousands of NHS appointments and operations being cancelled. More than half a million appointments, operations and procedures have been postponed in England as a result of the wave of industrial unrest in the NHS. Strikes began towards the end of 2022 in the bitter dispute over NHS pay. Next month’s five-day strike will be the fourth this year by junior doctors in England and is expected to cause mass disruption. The British Medical Association (BMA) is calling for “full restoration” of pay, which it says has been cut by 26%. The government has offered 5% to end the dispute. In a statement issued on Friday, the co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee, Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, said: “We are announcing the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history – but this is not a record that needs to go into the history books. Even now the government can avert our action by coming to the table with a credible offer on pay restoration. “The NHS is one of this country’s proudest achievements and it is shameful that we have a government seemingly content to let it decline to the point of collapse with decades of real-terms pay cuts to doctors driving them away. “With the 75th birthday of the NHS just days away, neglect of its workforce has left us with 7.4 million people on waiting lists for surgery and procedures, 8,500 unfilled doctors’ posts in hospitals, and doctors who can barely walk down the road without a foreign government tempting them to leave an NHS where they are paid £14 an hour for a country which will pay them properly. “It has been almost a week since the last round of strikes finished but not once have we heard from Rishi Sunak or Steve Barclay in terms of reopening negotiations since their collapse of our talks and cancelling all scheduled meetings a month ago. What better indication of how committed they are to ending this dispute could we have?” The announcement comes as a BMA survey shows junior doctors report being inundated with more opportunities to move abroad in the last four months than ever before. More than half say they have received more job advertisements from recruiters to overseas jobs since strikes were announced. Droves of junior doctors have already left the UK for jobs in countries such as Australia. “Restoring pay can stem the flow of Australian job adverts in doctors’ social media feeds – and lead to a future 75 years of doctors being paid fairly, in a rebuilt workforce and NHS that this country can continue to be proud of,” said Laurenson and Trivedi said. Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) are being balloted over the prospect of continuing strikes until Christmas, with the vote due to close on Friday. Hospital consultants in England have announced they will strike for two days in July if they vote in favour of industrial action. The BMA said its members will strike on 20 and 21 July if consultants vote in favour. Results from the ballot are due by the end of the month. Some unions have settled the matter with ministers after the NHS Staff Council voted to accept the government’s revised pay offer for staff on the “agenda for change” contract, including paramedics, nurses and physiotherapists. This means staff on the contract – a group that includes more than a million NHS workers – will see a bump in their pay packets in the coming days. The new offer represented a 5% pay rise this year and a cash sum for last year for the majority of staff on the contract – made up of all NHS workers apart from doctors, dentists and very senior managers. But the RCN and Unite rejected the offer and said they were still in dispute with the government.