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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Labour accused of 'crocodile tears' over junior doctors strike as ministers criticise medical union for low turnout in ballot - but Rayner's flagship Bill will make walkouts even EASIER
Labour was last night accused of crying 'crocodile tears' over planned strikes by junior doctors as it prepares to make walkouts even easier. Angela Rayner 's radical workers' rights Bill will soon scrap the 50 per cent turnout threshold which unions must meet to hold legal strike action. Yet the Government has repeatedly criticised the British Medical Association for achieving only a 55 per cent turnout in its ballot to trigger walkouts this month. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that the 'majority' of BMA resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – did not vote to strike and has called the forthcoming action 'completely unreasonable'. But Labour's Employment Rights Bill repeals the minimum turnout requirement in trade union law which was introduced under the Tories – making future strike action even easier. Last night Conservative business spokesman Andrew Griffith told the Mail the Government's comments were 'totally hypocritical'. He said: 'The unions are already licking their lips at the Employment Bill, which will unleash waves of low threshold strikes. By reducing the turnout required to trigger a strike, Labour are guaranteeing even more strikes. They are effectively giving unions the whip hand at the worst possible time. 'Labour is crying crocodile tears over the BMA strike action, given what Angela Rayner has planned. It is totally hypocritical. 'Rayner will grind this country to a halt and take us back to the 1970s. If they remotely cared about growth or our public services and the people that use them, they would rip up this extreme union charter at once.' Cabinet ministers are divided over the workers' rights Bill, with the Department for Health and the Treasury said to be 'quite worried' about the impact on public services. But Ms Rayner's department for Housing, Communities and Local Government believes that the threshold requirement makes it harder for unions to engage to settle disputes. The Department for Health has been at pains to point out that only around one third of resident doctors voted for strike action. The BMA, which announced last week that resident doctors in England would walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on July 25 over pay, has seen turnout fall in the past couple of years. Some 90 per cent of voting resident doctors backed the fresh strike action, with the BMA reporting a turnout of 55 per cent. But this is down from 61.9 per cent in 2024, 71.3 per cent in June-August 2023, and 77.5 per cent in January-February 2023. The union is demanding a 29.2 per cent rise for resident doctors to reverse 'pay erosion' since 2008-09. In September, BMA members voted to accept a Government pay deal worth 22.3 per cent on average over two years. The strike action lays bare a growing rift between Labour and its union paymasters, with Unite last week suspending Ms Rayner's membership. General secretary Sharon Graham said members 'don't believe that Labour defends workers in the way we thought they would'. But allies of Ms Rayner point to the Employment Rights Bill, which returns to Parliament today, as evidence of the Government seeking to 'make work pay'. Research by the Mail identified more than a dozen instances when the law now being repealed prevented strikes going ahead. Unions in the public and private sectors held ballots which found support for industrial action – but they could not take place because turnout was below the 50 per cent required by the now-doomed Trade Union Act 2016. A Government spokesman said: 'The old strike laws clearly didn't work, with the UK losing more days to industrial action than any year since the 1980s. 'Our Employment Rights Bill is fundamental to delivering our Plan for Change, with the biggest upgrade to workers' rights in a generation and ensuring people get a fair wage for their hard work. 'Instead of confrontation, we are ushering in a new era of partnership that sees employers, unions and government work together in cooperation and through negotiation.' Analysis of previous NHS walkouts suggests the strikes will send waiting lists soaring, with backlogs predicted to rise by up to 10,000 a day to 7.4 million. A Whitehall source told the Telegraph, which carried out the analysis, that the strike risks 'sending a wrecking ball through the NHS' and will be a major blow to Labour's pledge to turn the health service around. And hospitals will find it harder to plan to cover the strikes after Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, co-leader of the BMA's resident doctors committee, reminded members that they do not have a legal responsibility to tell their NHS trust whether they are striking. Mr Streeting will meet BMA representatives this week in an effort to avoid strike action.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
NHS patients sent new skin patches to attach themselves at home which can detect common heart problems
DIY heart monitors that stick to the skin to detect heart rhythm problems are starting to be brought in by the NHS. The small patches, which patients wear for a few days, can be posted out for them to attach at home. They represent a huge leap forward from traditional devices, which require set-up by a trained physiologist and involve numerous wires and monitors. And they could be used to investigate some of the most common heart problems including atrial fibrillation – a condition where the heart beats irregularly – tachycardia, when the heart beats too fast, and heart blocks. Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, in Surrey, is the first hospital in the country to roll out the device, with hopes that it will soon be used across other NHS trusts. Dr Iain Sim, a consultant cardiac electrophysiologist at Frimley Health, said: 'Atrial fibrillation is a really important and common condition that we pick up with these devices, and we're increasingly looking at whether we can use them to help detect AF that's not symptomatic, and whether people are at increased risk of stroke that we don't know about.' The Trust said it will still use traditional devices, known as Holter monitors, on some patients who are in hospital. But many outpatients will be able to access the new ePatch, which is made by Philips, to use at home. After the monitor is worn for a few days patients can post it back, which will cut out the need for appointments to fit and remove the equipment. The information from the monitor is then collated using an artificial intelligence tool, Cardiologs, which produces a report which is then assessed by either a physiologist or a doctor. They represent a huge leap forward from traditional devices, which require set-up by a trained physiologist and involve numerous wires and monitors. And they could be used to investigate some of the most common heart problems including atrial fibrillation Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, in Surrey, is the first hospital in the country to roll out the device (pictured), with hopes that it will soon be used across other NHS trusts. The Trust said it will still use traditional devices, known as Holter monitors, on some patients who are in hospital. But many outpatients will be able to access the new ePatch to use at home Dr Sim added: 'The benefits of it are that it is smaller and more convenient, rather than different wires all over the place. We are able to put them on faster and we're able to reduce our turnaround times for reports and to get results back to patients faster.' He said traditional Holter monitors are attached by trained physiologists but there was a shortage of such qualified staff. These devices involve attaching electrodes to a patient's chest, attached by wires to a small, portable device. Wearing the monitors can sometimes be uncomfortable, especially at night, and it can be hard to keep the electrodes stuck to the skin. Suzanne Jordan, from Frimley Health, said: 'It's been really positive – staff and patients really like it.' She said her team has doubled their productivity since introducing the patches, as they are able to manage patients more quickly.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
NHS needs to return to whole-patient care
I t's almost a month since my elderly mother broke her hip and was taken into the care of the NHS. Like many of us, I am simultaneously grateful for her immediate treatment but disheartened and bewildered by the NHS's destructive inefficiencies. Far too frequently its ponderous systems end up serving the process, not the person. My first surprise was ringing the ambulance service back after an initial call. They had told me to ring again if the patient's situation deteriorated, and it had. What was incredible was discovering that the dispatcher on the end of the line had, as a matter of routine, no record of the earlier call, no access to the ambulance list and no way of knowing whether one was on the way. It was as if databases had never been invented.
