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.
Last night Conservative business spokesman Andrew Griffith (pictured) told the Mail the Government’s comments were ‘totally hypocritical’
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
A junior doctor holds a placard which states ‘Cuts so deep not even a surgeon can fix it’ during a demonstration in London on March 13, 2023
‘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.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting (pictured) 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’
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.
