Christmas strike by resident doctors to go ahead as flu cases in hospitals surge
A five-day strike involving tens of thousands of doctors in England will go ahead as planned, the British Medical Association (BMA) has said.
The union said its resident doctor members had rejected the government’s offer to call off the strikes, and will stop work between 17 and 22 December.
Announcing the move, the BMA said 83.2% of those who took part in a poll rejected the offer, with a turnout of 65.34%.
The news comes after NHS England said it was facing the “worst case scenario” following a rise in flu cases of more than 55% in a week. Hospitals in England are said to be facing record levels of the disease for the time of year.
Live updates: Doctors to strike
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Streeting: ‘BMA made totally unrealistic demand’
Health Secretary Wes Streeting accused the union of “shocking disregard for patient safety” for choosing to stage a walkout “to inflict damage on the NHS at the moment of maximum danger”.
He said the strikes were “self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous” – and said doctors would be “abandoning” patients.
Mr Streeting said the BMA had refused to postpone strikes to January and “help patients and other NHS staff cope over Christmas”. “There is no need for these strikes to go ahead this week, and it reveals the BMA’s shocking disregard for patient safety,” he added.
But the BMA said the strike was “still entirely avoidable” and that it was “willing to work to find a solution”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
BMA: ‘Strikes are still avoidable’
BMA resident doctors committee chair Dr Jack Fletcher said: “The health secretary should now work with us in the short time we have left to come up with a credible offer to end this jobs crisis and avert the real terms pay cuts he is pushing in 2026.”
The union said it remained “committed to ensuring patient safety” and it would be in “close contact” with NHS England during the strike action to “address safety concerns if they arise”.
The government’s offer had included a fast expansion of specialist training posts as well as covering out-of-pocket expenses such as exam fees.
It did not include extra pay, but had offered to extend the union’s strike mandate to enable any walkout to be rescheduled to January.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Mutated virus is behind flu surge
‘Abandoning patients in hour of greatest need’
Mr Streeting said the strike “goes against everything” a medical career is about.
He said: “The government’s offer would have halved competition for jobs and put more money in resident doctors’ pockets, but the BMA has again rejected it because it doesn’t meet their ask of a further 26% pay rise.
“Resident doctors have already had a 28.9% pay rise – there is no justification for striking just because this fantasy demand has not been met.
“I am appealing to ordinary resident doctors to go to work this week. There is a different magnitude of risk in striking at this moment.
“Abandoning your patients in their hour of greatest need goes against everything a career in medicine is meant to be about.”
Hospital leaders said the strike would come as the NHS “needs all hands on deck” – and called the action “bitterly disappointing”.
Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “This vote is a bitter pill which will inevitably result in harm to patients and damage to the NHS.
“We had hoped that the government’s recent updated offer would be enough to head off another walkout at a time when so many people are suffering with flu, and the NHS needs all hands on deck.”
Rory Deighton, acute and community care director at the NHS Confederation, said: “It is bitterly disappointing that the BMA has rejected this offer and chosen to continue with hugely disruptive strikes.”
Public support for the strikes is low, according to a YouGov poll released last week.
The results showed 58% of those asked either somewhat or strongly opposed the industrial action, while 33% somewhat or strongly supported it.
A nine-year-old girl found dead in Weston-super-Mare has been named on the day police revealed a teenager had been charged with her murder.
Emergency services were called to Lime Close in the Somerset town at 6.09pm on Monday but Aria Thorpe was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said a 15-year-old boy had been charged with her murder and that a preliminary post-mortem found she died from a single stab wound.
The teenage boy – who can’t be named due to his age – will appear at Bristol Magistrates’ Court later today.
A police cordon remains in place as forensics officers continue their work.
Flowers and tributes have been left at the scene. Pic: PA
Read more from Sky News:
NHS facing ‘worst-case scenario’ as doctors strike
Arrests over plot to steal ‘tonnes’ of charity clothes to fund crime
Superintendent Jen Appleford, from Avon and Somerset Police, said the community was in shock and Aria’s family were being supported by police.
“It is impossible to adequately describe how traumatic the past 36 hours have been for them and we’d like to reiterate in the strongest possible terms their request for privacy,” she said.
Supt Appleford said police were working with local schools and other agencies to make sure support is available.
Britain loves chocolate.
We’re estimated to consume 8.2kg each every year, a good chunk of it at Christmas, but the cost of that everyday luxury habit has been rising fast.
Whitakers have been making chocolate in Skipton in North Yorkshire for 135 years, but they have never experienced price pressures as extreme as those in the last five.
“We buy liquid chocolate and since 2023, the price of our chocolate has doubled,” explains William Whitaker, the real-life Willy Wonka and the fourth generation of the family to run the business.
William Whitaker, managing director of the company
“It could have been worse. If we hadn’t been contracted [with a supplier], it would have trebled.
“That represents a £5,000 per-tonne increase, and we use a thousand tonnes a year. And we only sell £12-£13m of product, so it’s a massive effect.”
Whitakers makes 10 million pieces of chocolate a week in a factory on the much-expanded site of the original bakery where the business began.
Automated production lines snake through the site moulding, cutting, cooling, coating and wrapping a relentless procession of fondants, cremes, crisps and pure chocolate products for customers, including own-brand retail, supermarkets, and the catering trade.
Steepest inflation in the business
All of them have faced price increases as Whitakers has grappled with some of the steepest inflation in the food business.
Cocoa prices have soared in the last two years, largely because of a succession of poor cocoa harvests in West Africa, where Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce around two-thirds of global supply.
A combination of drought and crop disease cut global output by around 14% last year, pushing consumer prices in the other direction, with chocolate inflation passing 17% in the UK in October.
Skimpflation and shrinkflation
Some major brands have responded by cutting the chocolate content of products – “skimpflation” – or charging more for less – “shrinkflation”.
Household-name brands including Penguin and Club have cut the cocoa and milk solid content so far they can no longer be classified as chocolate, and are marketed instead as “chocolate-flavour”.
Whitakers have stuck to their recipes and product sizes, choosing to pass price increases on to customers while adapting products to the new market conditions.
“Not only are major brands putting up prices over 20%, sometimes 40%, they’ve also reduced the size of their pieces and sometimes the ingredients,” says William Whitaker.
“We haven’t done any of that. We knew that long-term, the market will fall again, and that happier days will return.
“We’ve introduced new products where we’ve used chocolate as a coating rather than a solid chocolate because the centre, which is sugar-based, is cheaper than the chocolate.
“We’ve got a big product range of fondant creams, and others like gingers and Brazil nuts, where we’re using that chocolate as a coating.”
The costs are adding up
A deluge of price rises
Brazil nuts have enjoyed their own spike in price, more than doubling to £15,000 a tonne at one stage.
On top of commodity prices determined by markets beyond their control, Whitakers face the same inflationary pressures as other UK businesses.
“We’ve had the minimum wage increasing every year, we had the national insurance rise last year, and sort of hidden a little bit in this budget is a business rate increase.
“This is a small business, we turn over £12m, but our rates will go up nearly £100,000 next year before any other costs.
“If you add up all the cocoa and all the other cost increases in 2024 and 2025, it’s nearly £3m of cost increases we’ve had to bear. Some of that is returning to a little normality. It does test the relevance of what you do.”
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment3 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024