UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has criticised the looming resident Doctors strike, promising that her party would ban industrial action by doctors if elected.
“They should not be going on strike. Conservative policy is to ban strikes by doctors in the same way the police and the army cannot go on strike.
“We need to have adequate levels of healthcare. We had legislation that would provide minimum service levels, Labour scrapped it.” she said.
UK Resident Doctors Strike
UK Resident doctors, previously called junior doctors have announced plans to go on strike next month. The five-day strike, which will take place between 14 and 19 November according to the British Medical Association (BMA), is part of escalating industrial action over jobs and pay.
Resident doctors make up around half of all doctors in the NHS, which means the scheme would be badly hit unless something is done to stop the planned action.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, has called on Health Secretary Wes Streeting to “come forward with a proper offer on jobs, on pay”.
“This is not where we wanted to be,” said Dr Fletcher.
“We have spent the last week in talks with the government, pressing the health secretary to end the scandal of doctors going unemployed.
“We know from our own survey that half of second year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment, and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
Dr Fletcher said that while the BMA wanted “to get a deal done, the government seemingly does not”, something he said was leaving doctors with “little option but to call for strike action”.
“Wes Streeting inherited an NHS falling apart through decades of underinvestment, but restoring our pay over several years, along with concrete plans to create more jobs and training places, would go a long way towards the start of a new and better health service,” he added.
