Badenoch says Conservatives would ban strikes by NHS doctors

Kemi Badenoch said the conservatives prohibit strikes from all the doctors of the NHS if they returned to power.

The conservative chief said that his party would present legislation for a minimum level of service and would block doctors taking generalized industrial measures, placing them under the same restrictions that apply to the police, soldiers and police.

Dr. Tom Dolphin, president of the British Medical Association sales union, described the proposal for “a desperate intervention of a conservative party which spent almost 15 years failing the NHS”.

Thousands of resident doctors, formerly of junior doctors, began a five -day strike Friday after the government and the BMA do not reach an agreement on remuneration.

In the United Kingdom, the only people who have legally prohibited to strike are members of the police forces and non-civil members of the armed forces. Doctors have the same right to strike as any other public or private sector employees.

The previous government has adopted a law requiring minimum service levels in certain sectors, including certain health services, but has never been to consider doctors.

The BMA says that despite an average salary increase of 5.4% this year, after an increase of 22% in the previous two years, remuneration is still declining by a fifth since 2008 once inflation is taken into account.

A 26% remuneration uprising is necessary to reverse the drop in overtones, according to the union.

But announcing its policy on Sunday, Badenoch accused the union of becoming “increasingly militant”, adding that doctors resident of the salary increase had already received was “well above all that any other group had”.

“Doctors do incredibly important work. Medicine is a vocation, not just a job. This is why in government, we have offered a good deal that supported the doctors, but also protected taxpayers,” she said.

“This is why conservatives intervene and define common sense proposals to protect patients and public finances.

“We make an offer in the national interest – we will work with the government to cope with the BMA to help protect patients and the NHS.”

Dr. Dolphin said industrial action was a “last resort” for doctors and “fundamentally the right to strike should always be there”.

“The threat of prohibiting strike is not the right answer for a modern democracy,” he added.

The BMA and the NHS in England have an agreed process for hospitals to ask striking doctors to return to work in the event of an emergency or unforeseen or mass emergency event, Dr. Dolphin said.

He continued: “This process is there day and night throughout industrial action, and we remain ready to meet any emergency request.”

Before the action of strike, Wes Streting Secretary Wes Streting said that the government “would not let the BMA hold the country to rancid” and insisted on the fact that the NHS disturbance would be reduced to the minimum.

The NHS in England had ordered hospitals to cancel only non -urgent work in exceptional circumstances.

No official figure has yet been published on the impact of the last strike. Some hospitals report that more than 80% of non -urgent work is still underway with superior doctors covering resident doctors.

But several patients said that the BBC operations that had been scheduled for and around the strike period had been canceled or postponed.

The Conservative Party claims that its proposed changes would put the United Kingdom in accordance with other nations around the world, such as Australia and Canada, which have much more strict restrictions on industrial action.

Others like Greece, Italy and Portugal also have laws ensuring that minimum levels of service are in place in their health services, but the BMA said that the party’s argument was “deceptive”.

The BBC approached the work to comment on Badenoch’s proposals.