‘Doctors leaving Wales in their droves’ as BMA begins longest strike yet
Thousands of junior doctors in Wales have begun a four-day walkout – their longest yet – in a dispute over pay and working conditions.
A wet morning in Cardiff was not enough to dampen the resolve of the medics calling for their pay to be restored to previous levels.
At the heart of their calls is a warning that the NHS in Wales is losing medical professionals “in their droves”.
Co-chair of the British Medical Association’s Welsh junior doctors committee Dr Oba Babs-Osibodu also told Sky News that doctors were “refusing to come [to Wales], and that’s because of poor pay”.
Dr Oba Babs-Osibodu
“We’ve lost 29.6% of our pay over the last 15 years, so almost a third. And our work hasn’t got easier, it’s getting harder actually,” he said.
The Welsh government last year offered a pay rise of 5% but the union says the below-inflation offer is the worst in the UK.
More than 3,000 doctors are set to take industrial action during the 96-hour walkout, with appointments at hospitals and GPs set to be postponed across the country.
The strike started at 7am on Monday and will last until 7am on Friday.
‘Concerns about paying my bills’
Dr Lucy Hall is one of the junior doctors joining the protest outside the University Hospital of Wales – the largest of Wales’s hospitals.
She told Sky News that current salary levels were leaving her concerned about paying bills.
“Practically, it means that concerns about paying my bills are a bit too much at the forefront of my mind while I’m in work, but on top of that, we’re struggling to retain our staff,” she said.
“So doctors are leaving. We’re hemorrhaging them as such to other places where they can be paid more, or other professions where they can be paid more.”
Dr Lucy Hall
Dr Hall said staff rotas were “underfilled” and had “lots of gaps”.
“That means that patient care does suffer as a result of that because you just haven’t got the people to do the job,” she added.
‘Doctors are exhausted’
Dr Deiniol Jones, a public health registrar at Public Health Wales, told Sky News that the situation in the Welsh NHS is “very challenging”.
“Doctors are exhausted. There are not enough doctors at the moment, doctors are leaving the whole time. And we can’t provide the level of care that we want. And that’s being driven by low pay and poor working conditions,” he said.
“I don’t feel very well-valued and I don’t feel that the pay really reflects the skills and the training that I have, and the difficulty of the work we undertake.”
Dr Deiniol Jones
Dr Jones added that those on strike would “much rather be working and helping our patients”.
“But we have to do something about the situation and the hope is that this forces the Welsh government to come back with a fair offer and once we get that fair offer we can stop striking.”
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The message to new first minister Vaughan Gething from the BMA is that “this isn’t going to go away”.
“We’ve never been this united before, I’ve never seen the resolve of doctors this strong before,” Dr Babs-Osibodu added.
“And we’ll keep striking and striking and striking. We know this is costing the Welsh government millions of pounds, they need to come to the table with something credible.”
The University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff
‘Disappointing’
Cabinet secretary for health and social care Eluned Morgan said it was “disappointing” that doctors in Wales were taking further industrial action.
Ms Morgan said the government understood “the strength of feeling about the 5% pay offer”.
“While we wish to address pay restoration ambitions, our offer is at the limits of the finances available to us at present and reflects the position reached with the other health unions for this year,” she added.
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The Welsh health secretary also said the government would continue to press Westminster for extra funding.
But the Conservatives – the Senedd‘s largest opposition group – say the blame for the “unprecedented” strikes “lies squarely at the door” of the Welsh government.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.
In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.
Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
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Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
Source: Linda Lacewell
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After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
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United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.
Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”
“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.
Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph
Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.
Related: Bitcoin rally to $88.5K obliterates bears as spot volumes soar — Will a tariff war stop the party?
Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue
Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.
According to accounting automation company Dancing Numbers, Trump’s plan could save each American taxpayer $134,809-$325,561 in taxes throughout their lives.
US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas
The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”
Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.
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