Doctors should be banned from striking, MPs say

Doctors should be banned from striking, MPs argue, as an NHS boss said many thousands of “medically fit” patients will be spending the festive season in hospital as a direct result of the walkout.

Health leaders have warned that the strikes – amounting to nine days over Christmas and the new year – will mean patients deemed well enough to go home will have to stay on the wards as there will not be enough staff to discharge them.

And they say lives are being put at risk because the beds “blocked” by those medically fit to leave will mean there is less space for patients with life-threatening needs.

In the first week of December, 13,000 patients were waiting to be discharged. But because consultants are filling junior doctors roles this number is set to rise.

Professor Carl Heneghan, an urgent care GP, said the timing of the strikes was “catastrophic” coming at a time when waiting lists are at record 7.1 million and during peak winter demand.

He said: “People will be dying on the waiting list. We are now seeing a catastrophe unfolding with a threefold perfect storm of a rise in winter viruses, the junior doctor’s strike and the record NHS waiting list.”

“We are heading to a deadly cliff edge.”

Nick Hulme, chief executive of both the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Trust and East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation trust, said: “Because of the junior doctors strike we have to shift consultants out of the wards and out of the theatre into urgent care.”

“That will inevitably impact those patients who are medically fit and ready to go home because the consultants won’t have the capacity to formally discharge them.

“As a result many thousands could end up unnecessarily staying in hospital over Christmas or the new year.”

Yesterday NHS Confederation chief Matthew Taylor confiirmed that the three-day strike, which ended yesterday, had hampered efforts to discharge patients for Christmas.

He told BBC Breakfast: “We’ve coped, I think, pretty well with the last few days, partly because we’ve become sadly so used to planning for strike action.”

“We’ve had strike action in various kinds going on for a year now.”

“But there has been some impact. What I’ve picked up is some impacts in terms of being able to discharge people before Christmas.

“We rely on, generally most years, we are able to discharge more people before Christmas to be back home, for example, with their families, and that’s been slowed down.”

January’s strike would be a different matter, he said, adding: “Six days of strike action following bank holiday at a time of enormous pressure, there are real issues around patient safety and we don’t have in place national derogations, which we have had for other strikes.”

“So yes, there will be an impact on the backlog, but I also have real concerns about patient safety over these days.”

Conservative MP Philip Davies said it was “completely unacceptable” for doctors to “go on strike causing harm to the people they are supposed to be caring for”.

He said: “It is not their employer who is harmed by strike action, it is their patients and that cannot be right. Police officers are not allowed to go on strike and I think that ban should apply to other parts of the emergency services and that should include doctors.”

“In return, the Government should pledge to accept and implement pay review body recommendations.”

Tory MP Alexander Stafford said doctors should “definitely” be banned from walking out in winter, saying: “Now more than ever we need our doctors putting the patients first.”

Fellow Conservative MP Marco Longhi stated: “It is impossible to see how striking at any time, let alone during winter, the NHS’s busiest time, avoids causing harm or hurt to patients and some may say is also cynically unprofessional.”

The latest strike by junior doctors in England – lasting three days last week, brought the total number to 28 days this year.

It will be followed by a six day walkout from 7 am on Wednesday, January 3 to 7 am on Tuesday, January 9 – the longest strike in NHS history.

James Morris, a Conservative member of Westminster’s health committee, called for the strike to be cancelled.

“The NHS always faces acute pressures at this time of year and strike action will significantly add to that causing anxiety for many patients across the country,” he said. “At a time when everyone should be pulling together across the NHS at this difficult time this strike action should be called off immediately so that negotiations can proceed.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme last week, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins called on junior doctors to cancel upcoming strikes and return to the negotiating table.

She said: “It is an enormous disappointment that the Junior Doctors Committee walked out of our negotiations… I’m willing and keen to find agreement.”

The strike is being organised by the doctor’s union, The British Medical Association (BMA), which represents around 50,000 junior doctors.

The BMA abandoned negotiations with the government after being offered a pay rise of between eight percent and 10 per cent.

Junior doctors are seeking a 35 per cent improvement which they say is necessary to cover the impact of inflation over a number of years.

BMA Junior Doctors Committee’s co-chairs, Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, said, “Throughout negotiations with the government we had a mutually agreed deadline for them to make a credible offer. This deadline passed, and we were therefore forced to call strikes.”

“We did not walk away from negotiations, and we are happy to talk to Ms Atkins at any time.”