The BMA Council has elected NHS campaigner and GP Dr David Wrigley to succeed Dr Kailash Chand as deputy chair.
The Carnforth, Lancashire, GP told Pulse he would call on his long experience as a GPC member in his new role.
Dr Wrigley is also chair the Medical Practitioners Union of Unite the Union, a spokesperson for the non-partisan Keep Our NHS Public campaign group and was a contributor to the book NHS SOS, which he says ‘outlines how the NHS has been betrayed by politicians, the media and NHS leads’.
Dr Wrigley, who has previously said heallth secretary Jeremy Hunt is out to ‘destroy’ the NHS, told Pulse his ambition as deputy chair would be ‘to ensure NHS as a whole is defended, and that it receives the funding it needs’.
Asked what specifically he wants to achieve for general practice, Dr Wrigley said that although the deputy chair role is ‘broader than that’, he would ‘obviously, as a GP, bring that experience to the role’.
Dr Chand, a retired GP and Labour Party campaigner, has been deputy BMA chair since 2012.
He was among the first people to congratulate his successor:
Congratulations to my dear friend @DavidGWrigley to replace me as deputy chair of @TheBMA . A staunch supporter of NHS and profession!
— Dr Kailash Chand OBE (@KailashChandOBE) August 2, 2016