I USED TO SUPPORT THE STRIKE — BUT NOW I REALISE I’VE BEEN DUPED

As the junior doctors’ dispute escalates, the British Medical Association increasingly resembles a militant trade union straight from the worst days of the Winter of Discontent rather than a serious professional body.

In pursuit of narrow financial interests, it has abandoned all pretence of serving the public or upholding medical ethics. the BMA might profess its devotion to the National health service, but too many of its members now seem to prefer the picket line to the hospital ward.

A spirit of genuine negotiation has been replaced by a mood of selfish irresponsibility, as shown by the new resort to industrial action.

this week, the BMA’s ruling Council decided — by 16 votes to 11 — to hold a full, five-day strike each month until the end of the year. We may be ‘one profession’, but we do not stand united. Unless the BMA backs down, the first of these walkouts will begin on september 12, paralysing the service and causing severe damage to patients’ well-being.

Altogether it has been estimated that up to 125,000 operations will have to be cancelled and more than one million appointments postponed. At the heart of this dispute is the BMA’s refusal to accept the Government’s proposed new contract for junior doctors, which health secretary Jeremy hunt wants to introduce as a central plank of his reforms to achieve seven-day working across the Nhs.

Using often inflammatory language, junior doctors’ leaders have claimed this contract will cut income by reducing weekend payments. In addition, the BMA argues that hunt’s unreasonable scheme will undermine patient safety, promote inequality for female doctors, increase stress, and pave the way for privatisation.

It is quite a catalogue of alleged mismanagement and iniquity.

And for a while, as a junior doctor myself, I swallowed the BMA’s anti-Government propaganda. Indeed, as a medical student and newly qualified doctor, I had served as a BMA representative, so I was inclined to believe the organisation’s utterances.

that is why I initially supported the strike. I was outraged by the idea — trumpeted in so much BMA publicity — that the Government planned to cut junior doctors’ pay by 30 per cent, even though this figure failed to stand up to scrutiny and was quietly dropped by the BMA.

But then this spring, rather than relying on BMA spin, I decided to read the draft contract. After going through the document, the scales fell from my eyes.

hunt’s proposal was no recipe for oppression and penury. On the contrary, it offered an excellent deal, far beyond the pay and conditions enjoyed by most professionals.

BAsIC pay would be increased by 13.5 per cent. the limit on weekly hours would be slashed from 91 to 72. there would be more study leave, guaranteed breaks, restrictions on the number of consecutive nights to be worked and, perhaps most important of all, a much more reliable, fairer system for recording hours.

the plan was not, of course, perfect, but the flaws could have been dealt with in sensible negotiations. But the BMA was not interested in rational talks.

Instead, its politically motivated leaders were determined to have a showdown with hunt and the Conservative Party at large to protect the status quo. sadly, it was the big weekend- earners who dictated the BMA’s stance.

But never in the Nhs’s history has a strike been less justified. the pose of victimhood among the militants is absurd. All the wailing about Jeremy hunt cannot disguise the reality that junior doctors are pretty well paid and most have lucrative careers ahead of them, with unrivalled job security and pension rights.

Moreover, the sense of grievance ignores the fact that the Nhs is in desperate need of reform, so it meets the needs of patients rather than the wishes of its staff.

I agree with hunt that one of the key ways to build a more responsive service is by shifting to a seven-day-a-week operation, not only so that vital resources — such as Ct and MRI scanners — are not wasted, but also because medical problems are not limited to office hours.

A seven-day-a-week service is just part of modern, 21st-century life. huge numbers of workers have such schedules, from lorry drivers to police officers. Junior doctors should not regard themselves as so grand that they cannot follow the same routines without lavish extra payments.

But, then, a self- serving attitude of entitlement runs right through the BMA’s approach to this question. And I fear that ultimately this will cause severe damage to the reputation of the profession I love.

Indeed, earlier in the dispute, the BMA understood the public would be unsympathetic to a strike in support of a pay claim. that is why it came up with all the rhetoric about protecting ‘patient safety’, ‘saving the Nhs’ and ‘fighting inequality’.

But now it is all too clear that such noble goals were a smokescreen.

Of course, doctors do care about these things, but make no mistake, money and protecting the status quo are the central factors in the strike.

In a move that makes a mockery of the hippocratic Oath, striking junior doctors are willing to put lives at risk for the sake of financial gain. What could be more inhumane?

As I know from my own work with elderly patients in hull, it is clear to me that it is older people who will suffer most from the stoppage because they are the ones who are most reliant on the Nhs.

I will be crossing the picket line if the strike is held. I cannot lend my support to this shameful action, a throwback to the seventies, when politically motivated unions held the country to ransom.

In fact, this current leadership of the BMA seems to be increasingly driven by hardline Left-wingers who want to use the dispute as a tool to attack the Conservative Government. I have watched with dismay at how BMA meetings are now hijacked by radicals who talk of ‘taking on the tories’ or ‘ending austerity’.

tellingly, the most prominent of the junior doctors’ representatives is an extremist called Dr Yannis Gourtsoyannis, a noisy supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and mass co-ordinated industrial action.

In a speech to the far Left National shop stewards Network, the shadowy group behind much of the recent industrial action on the railways and in schools, he declared: ‘Link up the strikes. Get all the tories out’, adding: ‘Now is the time to ramp things up. We need to defend Corbyn and show the Government the door.’

the BMA no longer has any real credibility. Its orchestrated hostility to seven-day working is profoundly undemocratic, given that the Conservatives were elected in 2015 with a manifesto that contained this direct pledge — even if it does need to be better defined.

MOReOveR, the association has proved a useless negotiator: erratic, changeable and unable to enforce any agreement it reaches. In May, after long talks with hunt, it came to what it claimed was ‘a good deal’ on the contract.

Yet now, following the deal’s rejection by junior doctors, the BMA is going back to the barricades. It is impossible to have any meaningful, constructive talks with such an unreliable body.

I have to say that the Government is far from blameless in this dispute — it has not come clean about how exactly it is trying to reform services, which includes a degree of private-sector involvement.

Yesterday, the BMA said that it had no alternative but to support further strikes. But that is just more nonsense. If the association truly respected the Nhs, it would denounce the strike and welcome the push for genuine reform. For, as I know only too well from my own experience, change is urgently needed.

Given the advances in medical technology and the pressures from the rise in the elderly population because of greater life expectancy, it is obvious that the traditional Nhs model created in 1948 is no longer working. hunt should stand firm.

For too long the BMA has acted as a barrier to reform. Now that it is plumbing new depths of reckless intransigence, it no longer deserves to be heeded.