Kemi Badenoch says she will ban doctors from striking if she becomes Prime Minister. The Conservative party leader said they shouldn’t be able to hold walkouts much like the Army, police officers and prison officers aren’t able to.
Mrs Badenoch said people have died as a result of previous doctors strikes. And she blasted the British Medical Aassociation doctors trade union for being “out of control”.
The strike by thousands of resident doctors, previously known as junior doctors, began on Friday after the government and BMA failed to reach an agreement over pay.
The NHS wants to keep non-urgent services running, with patients urged to attend appointments unless told they are cancelled.
The BMA has warned staff are being stretched too thinly.
No official figures have been released yet on the impact of the latest strike, but some hospitals are reporting more than 80% of their non-urgent work is still being done. Senior doctors are covering for resident doctors.
Members of the public have been urged to still come forward for NHS care in England during the walkout.
Mrs Badenoch told GB News: “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, the doctors have had about 11 strikes in the last year, 18 months.
“The reason why, doctors not nurses, is because the BMA is becoming more militant.
“Even the doctors are complaining that it’s no longer a democratic organisation.
“So the BMA is out of control, and we know that the public need someone to be firm, so we will introduce minimum service levels for those vital services.
“I mean, we’ll also make sure that we work in the national interest, will help the government.”
Members of the public have been urged to still come forward for NHS care in England during the walkout.
GP surgeries will open as usual, and urgent care and A&E will continue to be available, alongside NHS 111, NHS England said.
Streeting said the government would “not let the BMA hold the country to ransom” and it was doing “everything we can to minimise the risk to patients”.
Writing in the Times on Friday morning Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer urged resident doctors not to follow their union down the “damaging road” of strike action.
He said the walkout would cause a “huge loss for the NHS and the country”, as he criticised the BMA for “rushing” into strikes.
Previous walkouts have led to mass cancellations of operations, appointments and treatments.
More than one million were cancelled during resident doctor strikes in March 2023 and routine care was cut by half at some hospitals.
But this time NHS England ordered hospitals to only cancel non-urgent work in exceptional circumstances.