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
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.
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Telegraph
30 minutes ago
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Starmer accused of ‘downplaying' Troubles veterans' plight
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The Sun
35 minutes ago
- The Sun
I blamed my sore knee on a drunken injury – then my leg SNAPPED sitting on the sofa and I was left fighting for my life
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Persistent issues: Pain that disrupts daily life or sleep, reduced range of motion, knee instability, locking sensations, or persistent swelling, numbness, or worsening symptoms over time. Source: NHS
Daily Mail
38 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Inside the misunderstood relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher
Claims that the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the late Queen had a strained relationship were 'nonsense,' a royal insider has revealed. On paper, Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher should have had one of the best working relationships of any monarch and Prime Minister. They were both a similar age - with Thatcher just months older than Elizabeth - and both grew up during the Second World War where they did their part to help the war effort. And, perhaps crucially, they were also both powerful women in a world that was still very much dominated by men. However, despite this, their relationship during Thatcher's 11 years as prime minister was instead defined by rumours that the pair did not get along. This burst on to the front pages of the papers in 1986 when it was revealed that Elizabeth was said to be 'dismayed' by the 'uncaring' PM's refusal to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa, fearing that Mrs Thatcher's decision would split the Commonwealth. It was the most apparent public falling out between the Queen and her prime minister of her reign. And the rift was even a prominent plotline in the hit Netflix series The Crown. However, royal author and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth has claimed that their relationship was not as icy as the press at the time claimed but instead was misunderstood. Writing in his royal biography Elizabeth, An Intimate Portrait, Brandreth said that Thatcher told him that talk of the pair having a strained relationship was 'a lot of nonsense' and the Queen described the late Tory Prime Minister as 'simply marvellous' highlighting her commitment to the Commonwealth and the Armed Forces. Brandreth claims that while the Queen and Thatcher might not have seen eye-to-eye on policies - with the Queen having been known to be a small-c conservative compared to Thatchers more right-wing views - there is no evidence to suggest Elizabeth actively disliked Thatcher. The broadcaster highlights that the Queen showed the first female PM 'considerable respect' during her long period in office. For example, she dined at No.10 in 1985, appointed Thatcher the Order of Merit within a fortnight of her resignation in 1990 and honoured her with the Order of the Garter five years later. On top of this, Elizabeth was a guest at both Thatcher's 70th and 80th birthday celebrations and she attended Thatcher's funeral in 2013. The only other funeral that she attended was Winston Churchill. This however does not mean there is no evidence that their personalities clashed on more than one occasion. According to former royal butler Paul Burrell, Elizabeth II started washing up once in front of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after a picnic. Thatcher was adamant that the monarch should not be cleaning kitchenware. But Paul claims a compromise was found when Elizabeth told Thatcher: "Well I'll wash, will you dry?"' The Queen and Baroness Thatcher at her 80th birthday party. Brandreth claims that while the Queen and Thatcher might not have seen eye-to-eye on policies there is no evidence to suggest Elizabeth actively disliked Thatcher In another instance at Balmoral in the eighties, Susannah Constantine claimed that Thatcher once 'booted the Queen out for the way' in order to make tea for herself. The fashion guru, who dated the Queen's nephew David Linley for eight years, said that the former Prime Minister 'just wanted control' and was 'incredibly bossy'. Susannah said that the royal party were in a fishing hut on the grounds of the Scottish castle when Her Majesty was trying to serve her guests tea. 'The Queen would want to pour everyone's tea and I remember Margaret Thatcher almost booting her out of the way to pour the tea herself for everyone,' she said. As a staunch royalist, Thatcher had huge admiration for the Queen and - according to Brandreth - 'never failed to show her respect for the Queen'. This included arriving on time for her weekly meetings with Her Majesty but in some cases the Iron Lady would take her punctuality to the extreme. 'Whenever it [her weekly meeting] was scheduled to take place at Windsor Castle, she would get her driver to arrive on the outskirts of Windsor at least half an hour early for the appointment and they would sit in a lay-by,' Brandreth wrote. During their very first meeting in 1979, a nervous Thatcher reportedly went into the 'deepest curtsy the equerry had ever seen'. Brandreth wrote that the newly elected Thatcher was very nervous ahead of the meeting and the equerry guiding her to the Queen in the palace sensed her nervousness and reminded her to curtsy. Once in the room, Thatcher's curtsied so far down that she couldn't get back up. The equerry told Brandreth: 'We had to help her up. I took one side and the Queen took the other. We brought her to her feet and said no more about it. 'After the audience, when I collected Thatcher to take her back to her car, I said "Shall we just pause in this anteroom for a little curtsy practice?" We did.' Over 25 years later, at her 80th birthday party Thatcher performed another noticeably deep curtsy when greeting the Queen and Prince Philip at her 80th birthday party. Daily Mail columnist Andrew Pierce witnessed the curtsy firsthand and recalled the moment on an episode of the Mail's Reaction podcast. Pierce said Her Majesty's presence at the glitzy party at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge betrayed the 'nonsense' that the Queen did not like Britain's first female PM. 'The helicopter landed in Hyde Park, the Queen and Prince Philip arrived,' he added. 'Mrs. Thatcher did the deepest curtsy you've ever seen... at the age of 80. I didn't think she was ever gonna get up again.' It came a decade after Mrs Thatcher appeared to curtsey even lower to the Queen at her 70th birthday party. And on several occasions while in Downing Street between 1979 and 1990, Mrs Thatcher was pictured curtseying to the monarch - who she saw regularly at their weekly audiences. On the episode of The Reaction, Mr Pierce also described the touching moment when the Queen held Baroness Thatcher's hand at her 80th. The former PM was then both physically frail and had a failing memory. 'It was so lovely,' he told co-presenter and fellow Mail writer Sarah Vine.
