Latest news with #doctorsstrikes
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Doctors strikes will be banned under the Tories like police and prison officers, vows Kemi Badenoch
Doctors strikes will be banned under a Conservative government in the same way as police and prison officers, Kemi Badenoch has vowed. The Tory party leader today announced she would amend the law to bar the protests as she insisted the British Medical Association (BMA) is 'out of control'. It comes following 11 strikes in the past 18 months which Ms Badenoch said had resulted in patients dying. Her comments were made on GB News amid the ongoing five-day series of strikes by resident doctors in support of a pay claim. Urging Sir Keir Starmer to take similar action, Ms Badenoch said: 'The BMA has become militant, these strikes are going too far, and it is time for action. 'Doctors do incredibly important work. Medicine is a vocation – not just a job. That is why in government we offered a fair deal that supported doctors, but protected taxpayers too. 'These strikes will have a significant economic effect, but they will also mean cancelled operations, worry for families of the sick, and suffering for those who are unwell. We know that previous strike action by doctors even led to some patients losing their lives. 'That is why Conservatives are stepping in, and setting out common sense proposals to protect patients, and the public finances. And we are making an offer in the national interest – we will work with the Government to face down the BMA to help protect patients and the NHS.' Doctors hold lives in their hands. No one should lose critical healthcare because of strikes but that's what's happening now. That's why a Conservative government led by me would ban doctors' strikes, just like we do the army and police. — Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) July 27, 2025 Police, the military and prison officers are banned from taking strike action under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act. The Conservatives would amend this to include doctors. Action short of a strike such as working to rule and banning overtime would still be permitted - with doctors remaining able to unionise through the BMA, like the police, which has the police federation to represent members' interests. Minimum service levels have also been proposed by the Conservatives, which would aim to ensure a basic service provision in not just healthcare but other essential sectors like education and transport. The party has argued proposed changes would bring the UK in line with other nations such as Australia and Canada who have tighter restrictions on doctors strikes, as well as European nations like Greece, Italy and Portugal that have minimum service levels laws in place across their health services. Under Australia's Fair Work Act 2009, the Fair Work Commission is required to suspend or terminate strike action that endangers the safety, health or welfare of the population. Attempts to block doctors' strike action are likely to be challenged in the courts, specifically under Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Police officers have been banned from taking strike action since 1919 when the Police Act made it a criminal offence and all armed forces members are bound by the King's Regulations which make unionisation illegal. The Conservatives' proposed primary legislation would restrict the ability of for doctors at all levels to engage in strike action as regulated by the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. This would be done through exempting doctors from the part of the act that gives the right to strike. The Conservatives said they will also look at introducing back-to-work orders in a similar vein to other European countries. Stuart Andrew MP, Shadow Health Secretary, said: 'The Conservative Party has always respected the important work that healthcare professionals do, but enough is enough. 'The BMA has taken our NHS hostage and used this Labour Government's weakness to demand more and more – with taxpayers and patients left to suffer the consequences. 'As our health service faces yet another round of damaging strike action, the Conservatives are calling time. If Labour were serious about cutting waiting lists and delivering the health system our country deserves, rather than just kowtowing to the unions, they would back our plans.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Tories would ban doctors' strikes, Badenoch says
Kemi Badenoch has pledged to ban doctors' strikes if the Conservatives return to power. The Tory leader said that her party would introduce primary legislation to block medics from taking widespread industrial action, placing the same restrictions on them that apply to police officers and soldiers. Thousands of resident doctors, previously known as junior doctors, began a five-day walkout on Friday after relations between the Government and British Medical Association (BMA) soured over a dispute about pay. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said the union will not be allowed to 'hold the country to ransom' after receiving a 28.9% pay award over the last three years, the highest across the public sector. The BMA says, despite this uplift, pay for resident doctors has declined by a fifth since 2008 once inflation is taken into account. On Saturday, the Conservatives said they would reintroduce minimum service level requirements, which were brought in by the previous government and scrapped by Labour, across the health service. Mrs Badenoch said: 'The BMA has become militant, these strikes are going too far, and it is time for action. 'Doctors do incredibly important work. 'Medicine is a vocation, not just a job. 'That is why in government we offered a fair deal that supported doctors, but protected taxpayers too.' She said the Tories were 'making an offer in the national interest, we will work with the Government to face down the BMA to help protect patients and the NHS.' Patients have been urged to attend appointments unless told otherwise while the action is ongoing, with NHS England saying hospitals are aiming to reschedule any cancellations due to strikes within two weeks. Mr Streeting has warned of a challenging few days for the health service but said 'we are doing everything we can to minimise' harm. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Independent
4 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Tories would ban doctors' strikes, Badenoch says
Kemi Badenoch has pledged to ban doctors' strikes if the Conservatives return to power. The Tory leader said that her party would introduce primary legislation to block medics from taking widespread industrial action, placing the same restrictions on them that apply to police officers and soldiers. Thousands of resident doctors, previously known as junior doctors, began a five-day walkout on Friday after relations between the Government and British Medical Association (BMA) soured over a dispute about pay. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said the union will not be allowed to 'hold the country to ransom' after receiving a 28.9% pay award over the last three years, the highest across the public sector. The BMA says, despite this uplift, pay for resident doctors has declined by a fifth since 2008 once inflation is taken into account. On Saturday, the Conservatives said they would reintroduce minimum service level requirements, which were brought in by the previous government and scrapped by Labour, across the health service. Mrs Badenoch said: 'The BMA has become militant, these strikes are going too far, and it is time for action. 'Doctors do incredibly important work. ' Medicine is a vocation, not just a job. 'That is why in government we offered a fair deal that supported doctors, but protected taxpayers too.' She said the Tories were 'making an offer in the national interest, we will work with the Government to face down the BMA to help protect patients and the NHS.' Patients have been urged to attend appointments unless told otherwise while the action is ongoing, with NHS England saying hospitals are aiming to reschedule any cancellations due to strikes within two weeks. Mr Streeting has warned of a challenging few days for the health service but said 'we are doing everything we can to minimise' harm.
Times
23-07-2025
- Health
- Times
Why furious health bosses are braced for painful battle with BMA
I n the Department of Health and Social Care there is unabated fury. The collapse of a deal to avert doctors' strikes this week has led to a big shift in approach. While Wes Streeting, the health secretary, accuses the British Medical Association (BMA) of 'complete disdain for patients', many around him have concluded the body's leadership are in fact too weak to persuade their members to back a deal. They only way out, they increasingly believe, is effectively to break the union, something BMA leaders warn would be 'counterproductive', scuppering hopes of cutting waiting lists and driving doctors away from the NHS. The anger is so great because government officials working over the weekend thought they had a deal that would at least postpone the strikes. While Streeting has refused to reopen a pay settlement, he was ready to promise a range of improvements to resident doctors' working conditions that would leave them thousands of pounds better off.
Telegraph
14-07-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
The militant strike ringleader who now controls the BMA
The militant Corbynista who helped inspire the first doctors' strikes in 40 years is now in charge of the British Medical Association (BMA). Dr Thomas Dolphin, a consultant anaesthetist in London, beat four other candidates to become chairman of the BMA council last month and will now lead it for at least three years in what is already looking like a painful tenure for Wes Streeting. Ironically, had things gone the way Dr Dolphin had planned, he would be in the House of Commons alongside the Health Secretary. But the Labour Party did not shortlist him to run as an MP at last year's general election, and now he faces them instead as agitator-in-chief. The 47-year-old has a base salary in excess of £126,000 and has spent the past 20 years building on his political ambitions, playing a pivotal role in turning the union into the militant group of strikers that it is today. He is part of a group of doctors who have 'ideologically captured' the BMA, according to insiders, and been labelled by critics as 'Trots' – a reference to the hard-Left ideals of Leon Trotsky, the Marxist revolutionary. Last year, Dr Dolphin was responsible for putting forward a motion – that was passed without debate – to reject the independent Cass review into children's transgender healthcare, which had called on the NHS to stop prescribing puberty blockers to children. More than 1,000 union members signed an open letter in revolt, and around 200 medics quit as a result, insiders claim. An activist during the days of Jeremy Corbyn, he campaigned alongside John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor and socialist, and has been the election agent for Dawn Butler, the London MP for Brent East, in the last three elections. His rise to the top of the BMA has coincided with increasing levels of political activism and dissonance among members. He has been a critic of the Government and an outspoken member of the union since the days of Tony Blair – when the BMA says doctors were last paid fairly. In 2007, a young Dr Dolphin championed the BMA's calls for Patricia Hewitt, the former health secretary, to resign over a chaotic online application system for junior doctors that resulted in medics not being offered job interviews. He rose to become chairman of the union's junior doctors' committee and in 2012, supported doctors' first industrial action since the 1970s over pension reforms. He has been a hardline union activist and advocate of striking as a means to achieve results ever since. He made media appearances backing a series of junior doctor walkouts in 2016, despite by this point being a consultant and member of the BMA's consultant committee and council. In 2023, he fronted the senior doctors' own campaign for pay rises, claiming consultants had seen real-terms cuts to pay of 35 per cent since 2010, as they timed strikes to coincide with the junior doctors' walkouts and the Conservative Party conference. Although now he says, the union is 'non-partisan' and he is in a 'non-partisan role'. 'As in, I don't have any political affiliation as chair of council,' he told the Guardian last week. He also warned that the 29 per cent rise the junior doctors – now called resident doctors – are demanding is 'non-negotiable' and could mean strikes go on for years. Mr Streeting has also said that any increase on the 5.4 per cent pay award for 2025-26 was 'off the table', leaving both parties at an impasse. The Health Secretary said it was 'completely unreasonable' that the doctors would strike having received a 28.9 per cent salary uplift in three years. He is set to meet with the BMA's resident doctors' committee this week to see if there is a way to 'avert' the five-day walkout, which begins at 7am on 25 July. The rise of Dr Dolphin and like-minded political activists has coincided with the union increasingly alienating itself from the public and other doctors. Recent polling shows just one in five Britons strongly back the resident doctors' strikes, while senior medics have criticised the walkouts and even quit the union as a result. Its annual general meeting has attracted criticism for its increasing focus on political issues such as Palestine and Israel, its rejection of the Supreme Court's ruling on what a biological woman is and how single-sex care should be delivered, as well as the anti-Cass motion put forward by Dr Dolphin. The new chairman has also already written to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, to criticise the Government's plans to 'restore control to our borders' outlined in the Immigration White Paper. He said plans to increase the years that people, including doctors, must spend in the UK to obtain settlement status from five to 10 years would 'create unnecessary stress and uncertainty', and that the BMA was also 'deeply concerned' about introducing 'stricter English language requirements for adult dependants including spouses'. On taking up the role of chairman last month, he told the BMA's 190,000 members: 'The fight to restore doctors' pay and pensions continues, with colleagues across the country furious that the promised 'journey' towards pay restoration that we were promised has already come to a grinding halt.' With consultants also holding an 'indicative ballot' on industrial action, the upcoming strikes look set to be just the first under Dr Dolphin's reign.
