So, junior doctors, what exactly is it you’re striking for? | Deborah Orr
It’s hard to believe that the British Medical Association really intends to stage four five-day junior doctors’ strikes before the end of the year, one of them in just a couple of weeks’ time. BMA members, after all, are the people who warn that the NHS is already under intolerable pressure. How can they therefore believe that such huge, continuing disruption can simply be absorbed by their colleagues, bringing no harm to patients? It doesn’t make sense.
Nor does the BMA’s own position quite make sense. The strikes earlier in the year resulted in a renegotiation and new contract for junior doctors, which the BMA committee declared satisfactory. Yes, it was rejected by members. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the new contract did largely address the particular problems with weekend remuneration that junior doctors had initially identified.
Supporters of action will argue that the dispute is about much more than junior doctors’ contracts. But there has to be a worry, surely, that if the specific detail acting as a catalyst for industrial action isn’t perceived by the public as impeccably clear and strong then the wider message is also undermined.
Many people are concerned about the future of the NHS. And many people were dumbfounded that Theresa May opted to keep Jeremy Hunt as health secretary. But, to me, it’s beginning to look as if the junior doctor’s dispute isn’t really solid enough to carry the weight of such hefty concerns.
I have sympathy with the argument that the move to a seven-day NHS, without a proportionate increase in funding, is a dangerous one. It can certainly be interpreted as a way for politicians to actually cut funding while claiming to be increasing it, as they regularly do.
People have every right to be suspicious. In the 1980s and 1990s, public services were starved of funding by governments which then cited the mess that they were in as prima facie evidence that they were hopeless and had to be privatised. Not everyone has forgotten such cynical strategies, or persuaded themselves that they could never be employed again. They most certainly could.
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