Pre-Christmas resident doctors’ strike plan ‘reckless’, says NHS England chief

The BMA’s plans for resident doctors to strike in the lead-up to Christmas is ‘reckless’ and will risk patient safety, NHS England’s chief executive Sir Jim Mackey has said.

The BMA’s resident doctors committee (RDC) announced the 17-22 December walkout yesterday, with the protest forming part of a dispute concerning resident doctor pay, GP unemployment and a lack of specialty training places.

RDC chair Dr Jack Fletcher said: ’With the Government failing to put forward a credible plan to fix the jobs crisis for resident doctors at the same time as pushing a real terms pay cut for them, we have no choice but to announce more strike dates.

‘However, these do not need to go ahead. Gradually raising pay over a few years and some common-sense fixes to the job security of our doctors are well within the reach of this Government.

‘It would ensure both the long-term strength of our healthcare workforce and spare the country the indignity of seeing unemployed doctors at a time patients are queuing up to even even see a GP.’

In response Sir Jim said: ‘This is totally reckless behaviour from the BMA Committee. The timing of the latest industrial action is clearly designed to maximise disruption of patient care, coming just as flu cases are surging and we enter the most dangerous time of year for hospitals. 

‘The NHS has done everything in the last two rounds of BMA industrial action to minimise disruption, but the BMA RDC absolutely know it will take a monumental effort to keep patients safe this time, which makes this a shameful decision to have taken.’ 

He added that the proposed action threatened to prevent ‘hard-working NHS colleagues’ from spending Christmas with their families, ‘with many now likely to be called in on their well-earned days off’. 

‘The NHS, its staff and patients simply cannot go on with a situation where services are beholden to calculated attacks like this.’ 

His comments come as the Government removed the BMA’s sole role in GP contract negotiations last week, in response to its dispute over 1 October contract changes.

Resident doctors previously went on strike last month for five days as part of the same dispute.

This year saw record competition for GP specialty training posts, with five doctors vying for every available place in England. 

And in July, a BMA survey revealed that half (52%) of doctors finishing their foundation training in the summer had no ‘substantive employment or regular locum work’ secured for August.