Ali Fortescue halted the programme to deliver the breaking announcement (Image: Sky News)
Anyone who needs to see a resident doctor during the middle of June will likely be left struggling as the British Medical Association has just announced a new round of strikes. Delivering the breaking announcement on Sky News, Ali Fortescue said: “I’m just going to bring you a little bit of breaking news that’s come to us from the British Medical Association. They said that resident doctors will strike from June 15th to June 19th and that is as part of their long-running dispute with the government over pay.”
Moments later, the upcoming increase in energy bills was being discussed when the presenter was forced to interrupt the broadcast. “I’m afraid we’re just going to dip out of that and go straight to the British Medical Association after announcing that fresh round of strikes,” she said.
Dr Jack Fletcher, the chair of the British Medical Association said: “We are asking for further discussions and further negotiations to try and avert further industrial action in June.”
When asked by a reporter how the planned strikes can be justified, Fletcher responded: “As it stands, we still have doctors who are not employed in August.
“We have doctors who are desperately chasing too few jobs in our NHS at a time when corridor care in May is still happening in multiple accident and emergency departments across the country. We’ve asked for details as part of a jobs package to prevent those resident doctors from potentially going jobless in a few months time.
He added: “Those details have not been forthcoming. That’s in addition to the fact that we’re likely going to see thousands of doctors leave our NHS to go to different industries and countries across the world because they are undervalued after well over a decade of pay erosion.”
The broadcast cut to Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the British Medical Association (Image: Sky News)
Another reporter argued that the strikes are failing to achieve the impact the British Medical Association had hoped for, claiming that public support has declined after 16 separate rounds of industrial action since March 2023.
When the reporter suggested this would have been a good time for a reset, Fletcher said they have been in regular contact with Health Secretary James Murray but they are still being presented with the same offer from March, which led to strikes in April.
He remarked: “We wrote to the health secretary hours after he was appointed a couple of weeks ago. We asked to meet him, we continued discussions with the negotiating team and the government.
Despite that, two weeks later, we’re still being met with the same offer that was presented with us back in March which triggered industrial action in April.”
Fletcher added that the British Medical Association has “outlined specific areas open to negotiation” in an effort to avoid strike action in June, but has yet to receive an offer it considers satisfactory.
He went on: “We specifically requested to get round a table today, get rid of some of those vagueries around jobs for doctors who are facing unemployment in a few months’ time, to try and get towards a negotiating settlement that could not only avert industrial action in June, but potentially bring an end to industrial action for the next few months, if not the next few years, by resident doctors in the NHS.”
