PROTESTERS will gather on the streets of Stroud tomorrow in a sign of solidarity with junior doctors.

The group will be meeting at 11am on Stroud High Street this Saturday to speak out against the Health Secretary’s decision to impose a new contract of employment on junior doctors.

Yesterday Jeremy Hunt announced that a new contract will be imposed from August 1, after negations failed to reach a resolution.

His move sparked a fresh wave of anger among the 45,000 junior doctors in England who will be affected, and warnings that his decision will exacerbate the NHS’s already serious shortages of medics in key areas of care.

Junior doctors are on strike over the contracts, which they say will increase their working hours and jeopardise patient safety.

Doctors’ leaders have criticised Hunt’s action as wrong-headed, counterproductive and potentially damaging to patient care, while the British Medical Association branded him a bully.

The protest locally has been organised by local campaigning group Stroud Against the Cuts.

It follows an emergency protest outside Gloucestershire Royal Hospital last night.

Participants are encouraged to bring placards and signs.

For further information about the event visit the Facebook page: Support Junior Doctors - No to Imposition of an unsafe new contract. Protest

The contract, which will be imposed from August, when newly qualified doctors begin working in the NHS, contains major concessions offered by Government negotiators in recent weeks.

Doctors will receive a 13.5 per cent rise in their basic pay to compensate for the cut to evening, night shift and weekend premiums.

However, the key reforms, under which out-of-hours payments for Saturdays will only commence at 5pm, have been retained.

The Government wants the changes to make it cheaper for hospitals to roster doctors at weekends, but medics fear it will lead to the workforce being overstretched.

New concessions will, however, mean that any doctor working one in four Saturdays will be paid out-of-hours rates for all hours on all Saturdays worked.

Safeguards have been promised to ensure no junior doctor works more than 72 hours in a week.

More than 120,000 people have signed petitions backing junior doctors.

Meanwhile, a number of NHS trust chief executives who had supported the new contract and urged an end to the uncertainty, insisted they did not back its imposition.