health: bma fury at imposed contract
WORKERS, MAY 2003 ISSUE
BRITAIN'S SENIOR doctors are considering industrial action after the government announced last month that it would impose the contract that consultants rejected by two to one in a ballot in October. This contract would have meant greater government control over their work, including more flexible working hours, and more government control over clinical decisions, and so more government control over patients' waiting lists and waiting times, irrespective of patient needs.
In pursuit of its targets of cutting waiting lists and times, the government has already pressured some managers into removing patients from the system altogether.
After the vote, the British Medical Association called on the government to re-enter negotiations, but it refused. On 17 April, Health Secretary Alan Milburn announced that the rejected contract would be imposed anyway: he would allow individual hospital trusts to implement it locally.
The BMA reacted angrily: “Local implementation is the issue on which we have had most protests. It is not what consultants want.” In protest at the move, it has called off all meetings with the Department of Health, and industrial action is possible. Paul Miller, chairman of the BMA consultants' committee, said, “This demonstrates once again that the Department of Health has no interest in engaging in constructive talks.”