The chances are you don’t remember doctors taking industrial action — the last time it happened was in 1975. The junior doctors who will be hit hardest by the Government’s changes to the NHS pension scheme hadn’t been born.

This gives you some idea of how reluctantly we have taken the step to ballot doctors on taking industrial action in a form that would not harm patients. It has taken a particularly intransigent government to drive us to this point.

In defending their plans to make NHS workers pay more and work longer, generally for a worse deal on retirement, ministers are keen to suggest that all public sector pension schemes are in the same parlous state and in need of significant reform. But these arguments cannot be levelled at the NHS pension scheme, which only recently has undergone a radical overhaul and, far from being in deficit, provides a positive cashflow of about £2 billion a year to the Treasury. In 2008, NHS staff agreed to large increases in contributions and to a system of tiering, which means that doctors already pay a greater proportion of their salary for similar pensions than other public sector workers.

Crucially, we also agreed to a higher pension age for entrants and to a cap on employer contributions — which means that the taxpayer will not pick up the bill if the cost of NHS pensions increases.

The NHS pension scheme is in sound health. Last year a Public Accounts Committee report concluded that the 2008 reforms were bringing substantial savings to taxpayers, with costs set to decrease further well into the future.

Yet the Government has torn up that deal and is asking all NHS staff, not only doctors, to accept a further increase in their pension age, eventually until at least 68, and to another massive increase in contributions. We have called on the Government to engage in meaningful talks. We are embarking on a ballot on industrial action only because it refuses to consider any change to its offer, which the medical profession has overwhelmingly rejected.

Under the form of action we are proposing, our overriding commitment would be to patient safety. All emergency care, or other care urgently needed, would be provided, with doctors attending their place of work as usual, where scheduled to do so. If someone urgently needed care, it would be provided. The difference would be that some services that could safely be postponed would not be undertaken on the day. In hospitals, this would mean some non-urgent procedures and outpatient appointments being postponed, but doctors would co-operate with employers to ensure that patients had as much notice as possible of any inconvenience. GP surgeries would remain open and fully staffed so they could see patients in need of urgent attention, but it would not be possible to book an advance appointment.

Doctors will always put the safety of their patients first. Even at this stage, industrial action remains a last resort and a step taken extremely reluctantly. If the Government does decide to reconsider seriously the unnecessary changes it is making, our door is very much open.

• Dr Hamish Meldrum is chairman of the British Medical Association Council