BMA facing backlash from members over handling of contract dispute

The British Medical Association is facing a major backlash from angry members and an exodus by medics disillusioned with its “appalling” handling of the bitter junior doctors’ dispute.

There has been a spate of resignations from the doctors’ union after it announced, then called off, a series of five-day all-out strikes in a failed attempt to stop the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, imposing a controversial new contract on the 54,000 trainee medics in the NHS in England.

Members are accusing the BMA of being “spineless” and “incompetent” and of betraying junior doctors, and there are growing calls for the creation of a rival trade union to represent them. BMA leaders, one of whom admitted privately that it has ended up “in a big mess”, are worried that its handling of the year-long contract row has left it divided and weakened in defeat.

Junior doctors have inundated their Facebook discussion group with angry messages about the BMA and Dr Ellen McCourt, the chair of the union’s junior doctors committee (JDC). Some have posted screengrabs of cancelled direct debit forms, showing that they are rescinding their membership.

“I don’t want to just cancel my direct debit. I want to tell the BMA why I am withdrawing my subscription. I want to tell them how spineless they have been,” said junior doctor Mukhtar Ahmed.

He criticised the BMA for endorsing in May a revised contract that it had negotiated without seeking members’ views. The contract was later rejected by 58% to 42% in a referendum among junior doctors.

“I want them to know that these series of blunders have not only lost us this fight, but any future fight and the NHS as a whole. I believe in the power of the union but not this one,” Ahmed said.

The BMA is examining alternative forms of protest against the contract, which will start being imposed from next week. It is due to announce details this week, though the options under consideration are believed not to involve any form of industrial action, such as a work-to-rule or refusal to do overtime.

Many doctors are angry that they heard from the BBC rather than the BMA last Saturday night that the union had called off planned strikes. Junior doctor David Pye said: “I am done. I shall not be sending you any more money. I have put up with utter incompetence, fucking survey monkey polls to see what I think, leaks, power struggles and, for the third time, I find out our master plan via BBC news and not via my union. Goodbye.”

Increasing calls to set up an alternative organisation to represent trainee doctors intensified after the decision. “Time to form a new trade union – run by junior doctors and only for junior doctors. Getting recognised won’t be easy and it may take too long for this dispute but now the BMA has proven it is not fit for purpose, this is our only option for the future,” said medic Christopher Howarth.

McCourt and the JDC decided to abandon further industrial action in the campaign against Hunt after large numbers of junior doctors made clear that they had deep misgivings about taking part. BMA leaders feared that turnout might be as low as 20%, well down on the majority support during the eight previous days of industrial action between January and May.

A five-day strike due earlier this month was cancelled after the BMA admitted giving hospitals too little time to make arrangements to cope with the disruption. The first long stoppage was due to take place on 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11 October, despite warnings from senior doctors, medical bodies and the chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, that patients would be at risk.

There is widespread anger among junior doctors at the cancellation, even though it appears that many of them were opposed to such a long stoppage. Many think the U-turn was merely the latest in a series of tactical blunders by the union in their unsuccessful battle to force Hunt to back down.

A sizeable minority of members of the BMA’s ruling council fear the union has done itself potentially irreparable harm and that the plan for five-day strikes has severely damaged public trust in doctors and left them looking uncaring and reckless. Some believe that Dr Mark Porter, the union’s leader, allowed its JDC too much freedom under McCourt and her predecessor, Johann Malawana, to decide its own tactics.

In a post on the Facebook site in response to the torrent of online anger, McCourt insisted the junior doctors’ campaign would go on. Defending the cancellation, she said: “We had a choice that included continuing the current planned industrial action, changing the planned IA or suspending the action. The JDC, having weighed up the new information, debated the options and voted to suspend the IA and pursue other means of resisting the contract. This does not mean the fight against imposition and this contract is over.”

BMA facing backlash from members over handling of contract dispute

Clinton campaign admits "we could have done better" handling pneumonia news

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has acknowledged mishandling news of her pneumonia, as Donald Trump sought to capitalize on growing questions over his opponent’s trustworthiness at a critical moment in their race for the White House.

“We could have done better yesterday,” wrote Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri on Monday, after some Democrats began questioning whether the campaign had been fully transparent in its weekend accounts of her health.

“In retrospect, we could have handled it better in providing more information. That’s on us. We regret that,” added press secretary Brian Fallon.

Clinton was filmed losing her footing and being assisted into a waiting van after leaving early from a memorial for 9/11 victims in New York on Sunday.

Initially, campaign aides said she had “overheated”, though Clinton later insisted “I’m feeling great, it’s a beautiful day in New York,” after she left her daughter’s apartment, where she was taken to rest.

But once the video footage emerged – which appeared to support eyewitness accounts of a more serious incident – the campaign issued a short statement from a doctor revealing she was being treated for pneumonia.

A sign along a road near Hillary Clinton’s home on Monday in Chappaqua, New York. Photograph: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

Clinton had been diagnosed on Friday but the condition went undisclosed despite the campaign chastising reporters who had questioned bouts of coughing at recent public events.

The campaign now says Clinton will release “additional medical information” from her doctor in the next few days “to further put to rest any lingering concerns”, but insists there are “no other underlying conditions, the pneumonia is the extent of it”.

“I expect by the middle or back end of the week she will be back out there on the campaign trail,” Fallon told MSNBC. “If it was up to her she would be travelling to California today but it was her doctor’s advice [to rest at home].”

However, even if Clinton does bounce back quickly, the incident is raising fresh questions over trust which could cause more lingering political complications.

“Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What’s the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?” wrote Barack Obama’s former adviser David Axelrod.

His tweet prompted Palmieri’s first acknowledgement of regret, in which she added: “But it is a fact that [the] public knows more about HRC than any nominee in history”.

Their public exchange was seized on by the Trump campaign, which said it demonstrated a familiar pattern of secrecy by the Clintons.

“It’s incredibly important to be forthcoming,” said the Republican’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. “If you have a diagnosis of pneumonia, just be honest about it when you’re saying you’re overheating. Just say, ‘by the way, I’m on antibiotics’.”

Trump immediately claimed he would soon be releasing the results of a recent physical examination of his own, telling interviewers: “It’s interesting because they say pneumonia, but she was coughing very, very badly a week ago … It’s very interesting to see what’s going on.”

Clinton’s campaign and its backers nonetheless pushed back against criticism regarding transparency. Trump, they pointed out, had thus far declined to release his tax returns and refused to offer policy specifics on issues ranging from immigration to the fight against Islamic State.

The state of Trump’s own health was also unclear, with a brief statement from his personal doctor of 25 years in December providing few medical details and serving as the only record offered by his campaign.

The doctor’s statement described the Republican nominee in the sort of hyperbolic language typically associated with Trump, declaring him “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” if successful in his pursuit of the White House. Trump’s physician, Dr Harold Bornstein, said last month he put the document together in five minutes while awaiting a limo sent by Trump to collect the letter.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attends the ceremony in New York Sunday. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Despite repeatedly criticizing Clinton’s “stamina” in recent weeks, Trump was cautious on the topic of the former secretary of state’s health on Monday, saying in an interview: “I hope she gets well soon.”

The Republican nominee instead focused his fire on Clinton’s comments on Friday about half of Trump’s voters being in “the basket of deplorables”. Although she has since expressed regret for being “grossly generalistic” in saying “half”, she still stood by her characterization of Trump supporters. Clinton has continued to reiterate: “Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices.”

The Trump campaign has seized on these remarks and is now airing a television ad highlighting them in several swing states. The ad includes footage of Clinton grouping “the racists, sexists, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it” into the basket of deplorables.

The stumbles for Clinton come as polls appear to show Trump reducing a previously large gap, to an average of three points.

Even as her campaign sought to rein in any political damage from the past few days, several Democrats argued that the focus on Clinton’s health had been overblown by the media.

“Every candidate I have ever worked for has gotten sick on the trail and worked through it because you can’t take days off in a close race,” wrote Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Obama.

Bill Burton, who served as Obama’s national press secretary in 2008, said campaign aides would have been “understandably skittish about making announcements about secretary Clinton’s health” while Trump was pushing conspiracy theories about her wellbeing.

“Will it feed a narrative? Sure,” he said in an interview. “But only because the media gets led around by the nose by Donald Trump.”

And while the media was quick to cast the incident as problematic for Clinton, Burton said it could in fact provide her with a small boost in the polls.

“People respond when they think someone’s being treated unfairly,” he said.

“For Hillary Clinton to have pneumonia and even still give a press conference, convene a national security meeting, attend a memorial service in the hot sun for an hour and a half, and then take criticism for having pneumonia all the while … I don’t think the American people are going to punish her for actually performing quite well in the face of what’s an exhausting illness.”

Clinton campaign admits "we could have done better" handling pneumonia news

Harold Shipman: investigation launched into police handling of victims" remains

They had been held in case Shipman, or later his widow Primrose, made a decision to mount a legal challenge to the 2000 conviction.

But in 2010 GMP sooner or later made the decision to destroy the samples with out telling the families in purchase to spare them any further distress.

At the time GMP Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy said: “After considerably agonising and consultation individuals in essence took the choice not to result in people households even more distress by telling them about this.”

He insisted the procedure of destruction was dealt with in a ‘dignified manner’ though confirmed there was no ceremony.

It is not clear what the whistleblower has alleged but the IPCC said it would be investigating if the families had been misled over the disposals.

The force will also be subject to two other investigations which includes a single about the alleged bugging of a police workplace and claims that a intercourse abuse probe was poorly handled and then covered up.

GMP’s Assistant Chief Constable, Terry Sweeney, who had operating on the Hillsborough investigation, has announced that he is stepping down from the inquiry and will return to GMP although the IPCC probe is ongoing.

IPCC Commissioner Jan Williams mentioned: “These are serious allegations and the gravity and nature of the allegations, and the fact that they are created against senior officers inside of the force, implies they need to be investigated independently. We will also search at the wider organisational response by Greater Manchester Police in each and every of these investigations.

“We know that the households concerned will have been through very distressing instances, and we will be sensitive to this as we conduct our investigations. We have a statutory duty to carry out independent investigations in circumstances such as these, but we will make certain that we communicate with the households and do whatever we can to keep away from additional distress.”

Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy mentioned: “We will be cooperating with the Independent Police Complaints Commission as we want to make sure the allegations raised are brought to a satisfactory conclusion. We hope this can be done swiftly.

“On all the issues being regarded we will be supporting the IPCC investigation. As matters are now topic to an independent investigation I am unable to go into significantly detail. Even so, some of these troubles have presently been reported in the media and we offered in depth responses. I have stated prior to that the selections dealing with the aftermath of the Shipman investigation had been complex and sensitive, our priority was to steer clear of causing additional distress to the families.”

He extra: “Assistant Chief Constable Terry Sweeney has voluntarily determined to stand down from his perform with the Hillsborough Enquiry as component of Operation Resolve although the investigation will take area. This is a personal decision created as he does not want the matter to distract from the operation’s crucial operate.

“I support the need for tough issues we face to be subjected to scrutiny and for there to be a transparent process for this. We have been working nationally with the School of Policing to develop Ethics Committees that will consider delicate issues of policy. Locally we see great benefit in the creation of an Ombudsman to provide a clearer route for men and women who want to raise issues of concern.

“These are significant allegations but this investigation will not distract us from the hard work of officers and personnel each and every day who are trying to keep the public protected and tackling criminals.”

Harold Shipman: investigation launched into police handling of victims" remains