125,000 ops face axe in doctors’ five day strikes
As junior doctors vote for 5-day strikes that would see 1m appointments axed, a consultant warns...
JUNIOR doctors will stage the biggest strikes in NHS history over their new contract – despite being warned by their own officials that ‘people will die’ as a result.
There will be a five-day walkout by junior doctors each month until the end of the year, meaning up to 125,000 operations will be cancelled, as well as about 1million outpatient appointments.
Members of the doctors’ union have voted for the strikes – which were revealed in yesterday’s Mail – as they remain unhappy with changes to their terms for weekend work.
All departments will be abandoned, including A&E, intensive care and maternity – leaving nurses and consultants to fill in.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned it would be the worst disruption in NHS history, with a ‘devastating’ effect on patients.
The walkouts were agreed at a highly charged meeting of the British Medical Association’s council yesterday, with several members expressing deep concern.
One BMA official suggested doctors should be referred to the General Medical Council regulator if they took part. The Department of Health said the BMA should be ‘putting patients first, not playing politics’.
UP TO 125,000 operations will be cancelled this autumn after junior doctors decided to stage the biggest strikes in NHS history.
Despite warnings from some of its own officials that ‘people will die’, the British Medical Association (BMA) yesterday voted to approve a series of five-day walkouts.
The strikes – details of which were revealed by the Mail yesterday – will see junior doctors withdraw all labour for five consecutive days each month until the end of the year.
The first is due to begin in less than two weeks, on September 12.
Some 1million outpatient appointments are expected to be cancelled and hospitals face being crippled in the run-up to winter. Last night, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned it would be the worst industrial action in the NHS’s history with a ‘devastating’ effect on patients.
The strike – over the terms of a new contract – was agreed at a meeting of the BMA’s council yesterday, with fewer than 30 of the its 40 members voting.
But some expressed deep concern. One official warned: ‘People will die. This will be blamed on us. We cannot argue it’s about safety. It’s about money and always has been.’ Another said doctors should be referred to the General Medical Council regulator if they took part.
And one said withdrawing care – by going on strike – was ‘equivalent to imposing harm on patients’.
Junior doctors will walk out from 8am to 5pm for five days, abandoning all departments and leaving nurses and consultants to fill in.
The BMA is yet to announce the dates for its walkouts in October, November and December.
Government figures show they will lead to the cancellation of 125,000 operations and 1million outpatients appointments – three times the total that were cancelled in previous strikes this year, which each lasted one or two days.
For the past year the BMA has been locked in a dispute with the Government over the new contract, which would pay junior doctors less for weekend work.
Although they reached a provisional agreement in May, the terms were later thrown out by 50,000 junior doctors in a mass vote.
The Government announced in July that it would impose the contract regardless and the BMA has since been plotting its next move.
The strikes have been spearheaded by the new chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors’ committee, 32-year-old Dr Ellen McCourt, an A&E trainee medic from Whitley Bay, near Newcastle.
Government sources said the junior doctors’ committee was unhappy with the contract as they want to be paid a weekend hourly rate that is 30 per cent higher than during the week. Current terms will pay them only 10 per cent more.
The committee is also demanding that junior doctors be given a guaranteed annual pay rise, even if they are not promoted. The BMA argues that the contract offered to doctors does not properly acknowledge weekend work and unfairly discriminates against medics who do not work full-time. The union also argues it will worsen staffing shortages in the week – as doctors will be made to work weekends instead.
Mr Hunt said the strikes were ‘devastating news for patients’. He told Channel 4 News: ‘People will rightly ask themselves why the BMA, who championed this deal as a good deal for doctors and a good deal for patients only in May, are now saying that it’s such a bad deal that they want to inflict the worst doctor’s strike in NHS history on patients, making them absolutely miserable.’
Danny Mortimer, of NHS Employers, which has tried to negotiate the new contract, said: ‘The proposed action is extreme in its scale and timing and shows scant regard for patients, nor to their colleagues who will have to work under even greater pressure when this industrial action goes ahead. Many thousands of operations and appointments will need to be cancelled or rearranged causing distress, delay and pain to our patients.’
The Department of Health said the BMA ‘should be putting patients first, not playing politics in a way that will be immensely damaging for vulnerable patients’. It said: ‘The BMA must be the first union in history to call for strike action against a deal they themselves negotiated and said was a good one.’
And Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said: ‘This will have a huge impact on vulnerable, innocent people who need care and access to services.’
Dr McCourt promised to call off the strikes if the Government halted the imposition of the contract, due to take effect next month. She said: ‘We want to resolve this dispute through talks, but in forcing through a contract that junior doctors have rejected and which they don’t believe is good for their patients or themselves, the Government has left them with no other choice.’
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