The British Medical Association (BMA) has defended a new round of resident doctor walkouts starting on Friday, insisting medics’ pay is still “way down” compared with 2008 and that the government has failed to finish “a journey” towards restoring it.

BMA chair Dr Tom Dolphin told Sky News the dispute remains rooted in years of pay erosion that have left resident doctors far behind other public sector workers.

“When we started the dispute, […] the lowest level of the resident doctors were being paid £14 an hour,” he said.

“There were some pay rises over the last couple of years that brought that partly back to the value it should be at, but not all the way.

“The secretary of state (Wes Streeting) himself called it a journey, implying there were further steps to come, but we haven’t seen that.”

When asked if the row ultimately “comes down to money”, he replied: “In the sense that the secretary of state doesn’t want to or isn’t able to fund the pay increases to match the value that we had in 2008.”

Dr Dolphin argued that while “the general worker in the economy as a whole” has seen pay catch up since the 2008 financial crash, “doctors are still way down”.

The government points out that its 29% settlement last year was one of the largest in the public sector and was intended to draw a line under two years of walkouts.

But Dr Dolphin said the deal still fell short: “The gap was biggest for doctors and needed the biggest amount of restoration, and that’s what we got.”

He defended the BMA’s use of the Retail Price Index (RPI), a metric rejected by the Office for National Statistics, saying it “better reflects the costs people face”.

Should resident doctors get a pay rise? Have your say in the poll at the bottom of this story.

‘Who do you think is treating the patients?’

With Chancellor Rachel Reeves preparing her budget amid warnings of deep cuts, Dr Dolphin said the BMA is not demanding an immediate cash injection.

“We’re quite happy for that money to be deferred with some kind of multi-year pay deal so that we can end the dispute and avoid having further industrial action about pay for several years to come,” he said.

“Money spent in the NHS is returned to the economy. For every pound you spend, you get several pounds back.”

When pressed on whether the £1.7bn cost of previous strike action could have been better spent on treatment and technology for NHS cancer patients, he hit back: “Who do you think is treating the cancer patients? It’s the doctors.”

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Strikes will cause disruption, union boss admits

Dr Dolphin rejected suggestions that the dispute could destabilise the government, calling the idea “implausible”.

He admitted prolonged strikes have tested public patience, but said the government had left doctors with no choice.

“A prolonged industrial dispute makes people annoyed with both sides,” he said. “It is vexing to us that we are still in this dispute.”

“I don’t want patients to suffer,” he added. “I accept that the strikes cause disruption… of course that’s upsetting for them. I completely get that. And I’m sorry that it’s happening.”

Newly released emails from Jeffrey Epstein include one in which the late paedophile financier describes how Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor did have his photo taken with victim Virginia Giuffre.

The former duke, who was recently stripped of his titles, has previously said he didn’t recall meeting Ms Giuffre and claimed an image of the pair could have been doctored.

Ms Giuffre, who took her own life earlier this year, claimed in her recently released autobiography that – as a teenager – she had sex with Andrew on three occasions after being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Andrew has always strongly denied the claims.

Trump latest: 20,000 pages from Epstein files released

The details have emerged after thousands of files from the Jeffrey Epstein estate were released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.

The email that discusses the photograph was one of those released and features an exchange with a journalist in 2011.

A picture emerged in 2011 of Andrew, which has become infamous, showing the former prince with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, apparently taken in Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home.

Although the name of the “girl” is redacted, Epstein appears in his email exchange to be referring to Ms Giuffre, who at the time had spoken to The Mail on Sunday, which had published the photo and her account of encountering Andrew while travelling with Epstein. After cutting ties with Epstein, she moved to Australia. She also changed her surname from Roberts to Giuffre.

An email from Epstein to the journalist read: “The girl has fled the country with an outstanding arrest warrant. The da (sic) after she accused others, said in writing that she has no credibility, she was never 15 years old working for me, her story made it seem like she first worked for trump at that age and was met by ghislaine maxwell.

“Total horseshit, the daily mail paid her money, they admitted it, with the statement that it took money to coax out the truth.

“Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have.

“I have never misled you, this girl is a total liar, they (sic) authorities should check her australian immigration form… I will ask if they will cooperate – Prince people.”

In a different email exchange in March 2011 about an inquiry from a news reporter, Epstein messages someone listed as “The Duke”, which is thought to be Andrew.

Epstein told him: “Im not sure how to respond, the only person she didn’t have sex with was Elvis.”

It prompted the following response: “Please make sure that every statement or legal letter states clearly that I am NOT involved and that I knew and know NOTHING about any of these allegations.

“I can’t take any more of this my end.”

It is not clear if Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, was writing about Ms Giuffre.

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Epstein: ‘She is a fraud’

In a separate email to a publicist in July 2011, Epstein writes: “The girl who accused Prince Andrew can also easily be proven to be a liar.

“I think Buckingham Palace would love it. You should task someone to investigate the girl Virginia Roberts, that has caused the Queen’s son all this agro (sic).

“I promise you she is a fraud. You and I will be able to go to ascot (sic) for the rest of our lives.”

Speaking to Newsnight in 2019, Andrew said: “I have absolutely no memory of that photograph ever being taken… you can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not…

“That’s me but whether that’s my hand or whether that’s the position I… but I don’t… I have simply no recollection of the photograph ever being taken.”

Decades of abuse of thousands of young men by staff at a detention centre in County Durham was “ignored and dismissed” by the prison service, the police and the Home Office, an investigation has found.

Warning: Readers may find the content below distressing

The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) has issued a report into how “horrific” physical and sexual violence was allowed to continue against 17 to 21-year-olds at the Medomsley Detention Centre in Consett.

It named officer Neville Husband who was thought to have groomed and attacked hundreds of trainees in Medomsley’s kitchens. He was described by the ombudsman “as possibly the most prolific sex offender in British history”.

The abuse at Medomsley continued “unchallenged” for the entire 26 years of its operation, from 1961 to 1987, according to the report from ombudsman Adrian Usher. There was, he said, “extreme violence and acts of a sadistic nature”.

The centre held inmates who were all first-time offenders and who had been convicted of crimes ranging from shoplifting and non-payment of fines to robbery.

Several members of staff were convicted after investigations by Durham Constabulary in 2001 and 2023 found widespread abuse of more than 2,000 detainees at Medomsley.

But the ombudsman investigated what authorities knew about the abuse, whether there were opportunities to have intervened at the time and what was done about any opportunities.

Husband ‘used power with devastating effect’

Husband was finally convicted of sexual assault and was jailed in 2003 and again in 2005. He died in 2010.

Mr Usher said: “The illegitimate power imbalance that existed between Husband and the trainees and other staff further flourished within a culture of collusion and silence from other employees.

“Husband used this power with devastating effect.”

Trainees ‘physically abused’

Trainees were physically abused from the moment they arrived, when they bathed, were strip searched, during physical education, while working and even during medical examinations, the PPO found.

Victims were targeted for being perceived as gay or weak. Inmates who failed to address staff as “sir” would be punched.

Witnesses said baths were either scalding hot or freezing cold. A number of them said if they were ill, painkillers could be taped to their forehead and they would be told to run around until the pill had dissolved.

Medomsley leaders at every level ‘failed’

Mr Usher said: “Leaders at every level at Medomsley, including the warden, failed in their duty to protect the best interests of those under their charge. Either staff in leadership roles were aware of the abuse, in which case they were complicit, or they lacked dedication and professional curiosity to such an extent as to not be professionally competent.”

“The knowledge of abuse by the Prison Service, the police, the Home Office and other organisations of authority was ignored and dismissed. The authorities failed in their duty to keep detainees safe,” Mr Usher added.

The report highlights a complaint, written in 1965, of an officer striking an inmate with “a distinct blow”. The handwritten response below dismisses it as “playfulness”.

Staff ‘took law into own hands’

A letter sent to all detention centre wardens in 1967 refers to the “increasing number of complaints of assault” and warns of staff “taking the law into their own hands” with discipline going “beyond the legitimate”.

The police officers who delivered 17-year-old Eric Sampson to Medomsley in December 1977 told him he was going to “get the hell kicked out” of him there, he said.

Victim – ‘I could have been killed’

“The violence I had done to me was terrible. I could have been killed in there,” said Mr Sampson. “Every day and night was hell on earth for the full nine weeks.

“With all the abuse, and obviously the sexual abuse, it totally ruined my life. It should never have happened in the first place, or it should have been stopped.”

The inquiry spoke to 79 victims and witnesses.

Over 2,000 former inmates came forward to give their testimony to Operation Seabrook, a police investigation that led to five retired officers being convicted of abuse in 2019.

Lawyer David Greenwood, who represents victims of the abuse at Medomsley, said he has been contacted by men who were held at 20 other detention centres around the country, alleging similar violence.

“I think it was a systematic thing. These prison officers were cogs in a big machine which was designed, culturally or by training, to treat boys really badly,” he said.

Mr Greenwood is calling for a wider inquiry into abuse at all of the detention centres.

What have the police said?

The ombudsman’s report found police officers from both Durham and Cleveland police were “aware that physical and sexual abuse was taking place at Medomsley from as early as 1965 due to complaints of abuse made at police stations”.

It said officers who ignored, dismissed or took no action “failed in their duty to report and investigate crime”.

In response to the report, Durham Constabulary has publicly apologised for “the force’s historic failure to investigate decades of horrifying abuse”.

Chief Constable Rachel Bacon said: “This report makes for extremely difficult reading. It exposes shameful failings by police at that time: both to recognise that the physical violence meted out by staff at Medomsley amounted to abuse or to adequately investigate allegations by those victims who did have the bravery to come forward and report what happened to them.

“I am satisfied that policing standards at Durham Constabulary are worlds apart from those which sadly appear to have existed at that time.”

Cleveland Police said in a statement: “All victims of any form of abuse or exploitation should always be listened to and action taken to prevent any further forms of abuse, and we acknowledge this was not the case many decades ago.

“We know cases like this have a lasting impact upon victims and Cleveland Police has, and continues to, improve its service and support to all those affected by abuse, especially those in cases of children and young people.”

The ombudsman’s report pointed out that the victims have never received a public apology and the complaints process for children in custody remains the same today as it was at the time of the abuse.

Mr Usher said: “I leave it to all of the bodies in this investigation to examine their organisational consciences and determine if there is any action taken today, despite such an extended passage of time, that would diminish, even fractionally, the trauma that is still being felt by victims to this day.”