The doctors back down
The British Medical Association (BMA) has called off the five-day strike by junior doctors planned for next week, after coming under heavy pressure from senior colleagues, regulators and junior doctors themselves, who warned it could compromise patient safety. The strike was to protest against the new employment contract that the Government wants to introduce, which is designed to ensure junior doctors work longer hours at weekends. The contract had been agreed with the BMA leadership in May but was then rejected by the doctors in a ballot.
The BMA – which had proposed a “full withdrawal of labour”, including from A&E and maternity units – said the strike had been cancelled in recognition of the NHS’S need for more time (the BMA had given just 12 days’ notice) to ensure patient safety. But it still plans a rolling programme of industrial action starting in October, with three five-day strikes in the run-up to Christmas.
What the editorials said
The BMA was right to axe the strike, said The Times: a fiveday walkout by 45,000 doctors would have meant cancelling 100,000 operations and a million appointments. For the same reason, the BMA should ditch the idea of any further action. It’s not as if it hasn’t won concessions: on the union’s own analysis, the deal it agreed in the summer entailed a pay rise for all. In any case, the BMA has no mandate for these “devastating” walkouts, said the Daily Mail. True, the junior doctors did initially support strike action, but that was in November, before Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt made huge concessions (including bonuses for weekend shifts). Today, by contrast, a mere one in three doctors favours rolling strikes.
In his zeal to create a seven-day health service, Hunt may sometimes have been “unnecessarily combative”, said The Observer. But the fact remains that in the summer the BMA recommended the revised contact to its members as “safe and fair”. For it now to be pushing for strike action – which for doctors should only be an “absolute last resort”– is “bizarre at best”.