HUMZA Yousaf has been warned he must get back to his day job of running Scotland’s health service as junior doctors prepare to vote on strike action.

Throughout the SNP leadership campaign the Health Secretary has boasted that he has managed to personally avoid NHS strikes – unlike other parts of the UK.

But today he was warned that unless he starts to “get serious” with junior doctors and their demands there will be walkouts in Scotland.

Junior doctors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland started a three-day strike today over a bitter pay dispute with the UK Government.

In Scotland, they will be balloted on March 29 on whether there should also be a walk out north of the border.

They are demanding pay levels be brought back in line with that in 2008 – when it was 23.5 per cent higher in real-terms.

Senior medics have said SNP ministers have a “precious window of opportunity to prevent junior doctors in Scotland being forced to follow English colleagues onto the picket line”.

Dr Chris Smith, chair of the BMA Scottish Junior Doctors Committee, said: “That will mean the Cabinet Secretary actually remembering he has a portfolio to run and getting into serious, meaningful negotiations with us over how to deliver pay restoration and right the injustice that has seen our pay cut so much that it is 23.5 per cent less than a junior doctor doing the same job would have earned in 2008.”

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