The British Medical Association is acting like a cartel and its \u201cantics\u201d are endangering the NHS\u2019s future, the health secretary has said before the latest doctors\u2019 strike begins on Friday.<\/p>\n
Wes Streeting launched his most strongly worded attack yet on the doctors\u2019 union, coming close to accusing resident doctors in England of being greedy in their pay demands.<\/p>\n
He told the BMA to \u201cget real\u201d, made clear that ministers would not be \u201cheld to ransom\u201d and claimed the association wanted other workers to pay higher taxes to give doctors higher salaries but lobbied against medics being taxed more themselves.<\/p>\n
His pointed comments received loud applause from an audience of NHS leaders, who are bracing themselves for the five-day strike by resident \u2013 formerly junior \u2013 doctors. It will be their 13th since they began a campaign for \u201cfull pay restoration\u201d in March 2023.<\/p>\n
Resident doctors\u2019 salaries have risen by 28.9% over the last three years, but they want a further 26% over the next few years to make up for the erosion in the real-terms value of their pay since 2008.<\/p>\n
Streeting said it had \u201cbecome increasingly clear that the BMA is no longer a professional voice for doctors. They are increasingly behaving in cartel-like behaviour, and they threaten not just the recovery of the NHS under this government, they threaten the future of the NHS, full stop. And I think that is a morally reprehensible position to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told the annual conference of the hospitals group NHS Providers: \u201cYou look at the state of the public finances and the sorts of choices we\u2019re making, especially for the NHS. Let me tell you, when we ask some of the wealthier to pay more, some of the most effective lobbyists against paying higher tax are the BMA consultants\u2019 committee and the BMA pensions committee. So what they effectively do is say: \u2018We want other people to pay the higher salaries for doctors.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd as much as, as a cancer survivor, I think my surgeon\u2019s worth his weight in gold, we have to be honest and realistic about the challenges in the system, the challenges of public finances and the challenges facing every family, and it\u2019s time for the BMA to get real.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most recent figures<\/a> show that the average salary among doctors as a whole in England is \u00a388,269, with consultants \u2013 senior medics \u2013 typically earning \u00a3127,540. Separate figures<\/a> show resident doctors\u2019 basic salaries before overtime range from \u00a338,831 to \u00a373,992.<\/p>\n Streeting said the NHS\u2019s 1.5 million-strong workforce included staff \u201cmany of whom have not had a pay rise anything like what resident doctors have had, and many of whom, at the height of their career earnings, will never earn as much as the lowest-paid doctor\u201d.<\/p>\n NHS trust leaders are hugely anxious about the disruption this week\u2019s strike will cause to the speed and quality of the care they provide, especially with hospitals already busy with the unusually early arrival of flu.<\/p>\n One trust chief executive warned that during a strike \u201cyou\u2019re not as focused on treating everybody as well as you could \u2026 There is a risk that people will die who wouldn\u2019t otherwise have come to harm.\u201d<\/p>\n The BMA has been approached for a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British Medical Association is acting like a cartel and its \u201cantics\u201d are endangering the NHS\u2019s future, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-280051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}