18.05.15
BMA seeks legal advice on NHS breaching Human Rights Act
The BMA is to seek legal advice on whether NHS employers are breeching the Human Rights Act in their treatment of junior doctors.
The doctors claim hospitals across the country routinely ignore their requests for leave to attend ‘life events’, such as weddings, and often give little more than a week’s notice for holidays. They are also unhappy that they have little say in where and when they work or when they take their holidays, and that their work week of 46-47 hours can include spells where they work 12 days in a row.
At the junior doctors conference in London they called for the BMA to determine whether these practices are in violation of the Act which enshrines a right to family and a private life.
Attendees heard an example of one colleague who was given two weeks’ notice to arrange a rota swap or face working on their own wedding day, despite giving prior notice.
Working conditions have become a major issue in the negotiations between NHS Employers and unions over a new junior-doctor contract. Talks collapsed after 18 months last October when the BMA walked away, citing inadequate safeguards against excessive working hours and that “the government has been increasingly focused on achieving political priorities”.
The co-chair of the BMA junior doctors committee, Kitty Mohan, said at the time that some junior doctors are still working 90-hour weeks, leaving them exhausted and burnt out.
“By refusing to ensure that safeguards are in place, the government has failed to protect patients and junior doctors from unsafe and gruelling working patterns.” she said. “Junior doctors are asking that they have the basic guarantees on safe working hours, training, fair pay and respect for the right to a life outside of work, which should be the bare minimum for any employee.”
Bill McMillan, assistant director of medical pay and workforce at the NHS Employers organisation, told the Independent that the new contract offered to junior doctors was “fair and reasonable” and “balanced the needs of the patients with those of junior doctors”.
“Of course, all healthcare professionals need to organise their work around the needs of patients,” he said. “There is an agreed code of practice that minimises disruption to junior doctors’ personal lives by providing them with relevant information before they are employed. Employers are committed to using that effectively and they do their utmost to avoid clashes with personal ‘life events’.”
Pay negotiations between unions and the new government are set to restart in the coming weeks.
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