BMA will no longer be lone representative of doctors in contract negotiations in England

Two unions will represent hospital, staff specialist, and junior doctors in contract negotiations in England in future, after the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association became the first NHS trade union in decades to win national collective bargaining rights.

Previously the HCSA, formed in 1948, has been limited to representing its members at a local level and in grievance procedures. It has campaigned for decades for collective bargaining rights, which since the inception of the NHS have been limited to the BMA. Relations between the BMA and the government became strained last year during the protracted strike by junior doctors, with England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, accusing the BMA of being “irresponsible” and “misleading its members.”1

In an interview the HCSA’s president, Ross Welch, told The …