Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives would ban NHS doctors from striking if it returned to power, saying that the British Medical Association is ‘out of control’.
The leader of the opposition said the party would introduce the same restrictions that apply to police officers, soldiers and prison officers to health service doctors and accused the BMA of becoming “more and more militant”.
Resident doctors in England are currently over halfway through a five-day strike, which ends on Wednesday morning, after talks with the government failed to reach a resolution.
NHS doctors’ strikes
The BMA is calling for a 26% pay increase to reverse pay erosion since 2008. This is despite a 5.4% pay rise this year – the highest in the public sector – which came after 22.3% increase which resident doctors accepted last September.
Badenoch told GB News yesterday: “Today I’m saying very clearly, we would ban strikes by doctors so that they’re in the same category as the army, the police, prison officers. People died because of the last set of strikes.”
She added: “The reason why [the ban would be for] doctors, not nurses, is because the BMA is becoming more militant. Even the doctors are complaining that it is no longer a democratic organisation. So the BMA is out of control and we know that the public needs someone to be firm, so we will introduce minimum service levels for those vital services.”
Laws for minimum service levels were introduced under the last Tory government, but have never been used in any of the sectors they targeted, such as health, education and rail. The legislation will be repealed under the government’s Employment Rights Bill.
Dr Tom Dolphin, BMA chair, called Badenoch’s proposal “a desperate intervention from a Conservative Party that spent nearly 15 years failing the NHS”.
He said industrial action was a last resort and that the right to strike should always be there. “Threatening to ban strike action is not the right response for a modern democracy,” he said.
The Royal College of Nursing is expected to announce the result of a vote later this week on whether its members think the government’s 3.6% pay rise for nurses on Agenda for Change contracts is enough. Media reports today have suggested the overwhelming majority have voted to say it is not.
Last week, the Royal College of Midwives announced the result of three-week consultation with its members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The majority in each nation – 81.9%, 83.5% and 77.7% respectively – said they found the same pay award “not acceptable”.
However, turnout was low, and the RCM said if it were to be replicated in a ballot for industrial action, it would fall well short of the turnout required.
Meanwhile, the GMB union has announced that 67% of its members voted to reject the pay award offered for 2025-26 in England.
Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, said on Friday: “Our National NHS and Ambulance Committees met on 24 July to discuss the ballot results and determine what the next steps should be.
“Today, we have written to the Secretary of State, Wes Streeting, asking him to meet with us to discuss pay and other issues of significant importance to GMB members. We await his reply with interest.”
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