The militant British Medical Association (BMA) is driving doctors towards Wes Streeting, a junior medic has claimed.
Dr Olly Scargill, 25, a junior doctor and Conservative councillor in North Tyneside, said the Health Secretary was “doing a terrible job” but the BMA was “pushing doctors like me towards him”.
Thousands of doctors starting their careers in the NHS face unemployment in the coming months because they are unable to gain a coveted speciality training place to continue their careers.
The union, which is locked in a pay dispute with the Government, rejected a deal that included 4,500 new training posts, with 1,000 brought forward to this month, despite a last-minute ultimatum from Sir Keir Starmer.
Junior doctors, now called resident doctors, are staging a six-day strike from 7am on Tuesday.
The deal had also included an average pay rise of 4.9 per cent but it did not meet the union’s demands for “full pay restoration”, which it said required a rise of at least 26 per cent.
Doctors will still get a 3.5 per cent pay rise this year – more than all other NHS staff – but not the extra training positions, which were withdrawn by the Government when the deal was rejected.
Dr Scargill, a general surgery trainee, said the BMA had become “unashamedly political” and was an existential threat to the future of doctors, with NHS leaders already sounding out the idea of making the health service less reliant on junior doctors.
As one of the foundation-year doctors set to be affected by the BMA’s decision not to accept the Government’s offer, or at least put it to a vote, Dr Scargill said he and many of his colleagues were “increasingly concerned that an institution which should represent all doctors has been hijacked by people more interested in student politics than delivering tangible results”.
“The bacillus of extremism has got into the bloodstream of an organisation that is now sounding and looking more like a Marxist mouthpiece than a professional representative body,” he added, pointing to the union’s decision to join Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion in a march in central London last month.
He said that “shouting through a megaphone” like his unrelated namesake, Arthur Scargill, who led the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, would get them nowhere.
The NHS has said that this round of strikes – the 15th in three years – will be “particularly challenging because of the shorter notice period”.
Prof Ramani Moonesinghe, the national clinical director for critical and perioperative care at NHS England, said: “We know this round of industrial action will be difficult, coming straight after the Easter weekend, but patients should come forward as normal and attend any appointments unless they are contacted otherwise.”
Mr Streeting said it was “disappointing for patients and staff alike that the BMA has decided to press ahead with strikes this week, despite the deal we put to them which would have seen resident doctors 35.2 per cent better off, on average, than they were four years ago”.
He said the health service “delivered almost 95 per cent of planned activity during December strikes, and I want to reassure patients that the NHS will be there for you when you need it this time too”.
Dr Jack Fletcher, the chairman of the BMA resident doctors’ committee, said Mr Streeting was “failing to acknowledge a deal was taking shape until the Government quietly watered it down, reducing the money on the table, then stretching what was left over too many years to make it worthwhile”.
He added: “Resident doctors are as keen as he is to bring an end to the strikes, but the Government needs to put an offer on the table that we can accept and which doesn’t change at the last minute.
“He also needs to stop using our next generation of consultants as a bargaining chip – taking away 1,000 posts when patients and the NHS needs senior doctors for the future.”
The BMA should represent all doctors – but it has been hijacked by extremists
By Olly Scargill
Wes Streeting is doing a terrible job – but the BMA is pushing doctors like me towards him.
On Tuesday, resident doctors will begin a six-day strike – the 15th round of strike action in this dispute, and the fourth since I qualified as a doctor just over 18 months ago. Industrial action has completely transformed what I thought being a doctor would be like, and not in a good way.
The current doctors’ strikes mark a new and worrying departure for the BMA. It’s clear something has changed in our union’s readiness to use what it consistently described as “last-resort” action. Mr Streeting must be regretting daily his blithe statements in opposition at the despatch box, claiming the Conservatives could end the strikes by simply “negotiating” about pay (clips of which continue to be shared in resident doctor WhatsApp groups).
This year, thousands of British doctors face unemployment because of the huge competition for training places. It is undoubtedly the main concern for newly qualified resident doctors, for whom moving to Australia or New Zealand simply to remain employed has become a rite of passage. What good is an inflation-busting pay rise if we have no jobs to go to? That’s the reality for me and many others.
However, the BMA refuses to call off strikes regardless of movement on jobs, as in 2022 they formally committed to a policy of full pay restoration. They demand “a path” to pay restoration to 2008 levels, making up for below-inflation pay rises since then, before strike action is called off.
Doctors have undeniably suffered real-terms pay erosion, but there is little recognition of the impact of the financial crisis. Of course this, coupled with the growing costs of delivering care to an ageing population, makes it more difficult for the Government to deliver such a pay rise.
I might be too young to remember the 1980s, but I know that shouting through a megaphone and not listening like my (in)famous namesake gets you nowhere.
The last few years have shown an unashamedly political side to the union. Last month you could find the BMA marching across the capital with Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace UK at the Together Alliance march. At their last conference, they passed motions criticising Israel and supporting non-violent climate action.
The timing of the strikes has also been used politically, most overtly striking just a few days before the 2024 general election. I know many of my colleagues are increasingly concerned that an institution that should represent all doctors has been hijacked by people more interested in student politics than delivering tangible results. The bacillus of extremism has got into the bloodstream of an organisation that is now sounding and looking more like a Marxist mouthpiece than a professional representative body.
The BMA’s demands and continued industrial action have driven away our greatest asset – public sympathy. We were privileged to enjoy support from the public for so long, and its decline has been palpable. So much so, that last week Mr Streeting was making political capital out of callously taking away the 1,000 extra jobs he promised if the strike was called off – 1,000 extra jobs that so many unemployed doctors are desperate for.
But there is a greater risk to the medical profession on top of the loss of public sympathy and the withdrawal of extra jobs. Senior NHS figures now talk openly about shifting the system toward being less reliant on resident doctors.
We now need to face the reality that our continued industrial action may not lead us closer to full pay restoration, but to a health service run by nurse practitioners and physician associates because it was too costly, disruptive and risky to rely on doctors. We risk weakening the very profession the BMA exists to defend.
By going for longer strikes, politically timed to be most disruptive, the BMA is refusing to accept reality and is not listening. Life as a resident doctor is no picnic. But for the BMA to repeat the mistakes of Arthur Scargill risks the future of thousands of resident doctors like me.
Dr Olly Scargill is a Conservative councillor in North Tyneside and a junior doctor