Why the BMA is now at loggerheads with NHS leaders

Trust between the BMA and politicians has never been particularly strong. In the middle of the longest strike in NHS history, we are now seeing a breakdown in trust between the doctors’ union and leaders in the health service. Last night the union issued what was, even by its own standards, a bit of a stinker of a letter in which it accused NHS trust leaders of bowing to political pressure to undermine the junior doctors’ strike.

Addressed to NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard, the letter says ‘derogations’ – the ‘last resort’ call for striking medics to return to work as a result of safety concerns – are being misused and that trusts aren’t providing the evidence that patients really are at risk. The BMA says:

It is, therefore, astonishing that during this current round of industrial action, NHS England and some Trusts have refused to evidence any efforts to source alternative staffing or demonstrate rearrangements or cancellation of less urgent work.