BMA Council Report March 2019

Council Reports, Reports, reflections and accountability

Four Broad Left members attended Council on Wednesday 13th March. The agenda was dominated by discussion of our legal action on pensions and a confidential item about internal governance matters. If you have any specific questions, or issues we can help you with, please contact us.

The union has continued work on Brexit and Safe Staffing which you can engage with.

Pensions

We are supportive of the BMA action on pensions, in which we are supporting members bringing age discrimination claims in an employment tribunal in respect to the discriminatory impact of the 2015 NHS Pension Scheme. Judges and firefighters have taken successful legal action over similar schemes, and the government is seeking to appeal. Our case is likely to be ‘stayed’ (delayed) pending the result of that appeal, and it is possible that if the judges and firefighters win, the whole public sector will feel the benefit without the need for further legal action.

The result would be that all doctors would benefit from 5 years accruements from the previous pension scheme, and that a new non-discriminatory pensions agreement would have to be made. This could result in a further attack on pensions by the government and we are arguing that the union and Trade Disputes Preparedness Group should be prepared for that. The letter has been very well received by members, and could contribute towards an appetite for action over pensions in future.

We also discussed the lobbying that is being undertaken to redress the pension discrimination suffered by Less Than Full Time doctors, who suffer from current annualization arrangements. The Broad Left are supportive of this also.

Some members of Council expressed concern that legal action against the government might harm the relationships built during contract negotiations. The Broad Left believes that action by the trade union on pensions, and an engaged and supportive membership, strengthens the hand of negotiators.

Confidential Item

A large proportion of the meeting was taken in private and concerned governance issues. We advocated for members’ interests as best we could. We are not delighted with the outcome, but we are confident that the issues will be resolved going forward. We have asked the Board of Directors for further information where necessary, to ensure accountability where possible, and for further investigation with the aim of uncovering and tackling any other problems. The issues seem to be known amongst some of the national branch of practice activists without us telling them. We are sorry we cannot tell you more at this stage. We will consider what we can do to resolve this.

Member Support Services Review

The BMA is undertaking a wholesale review of our member support from First Point of Contact to the legal teams. We are supportive of the review – although our BMA Employment Advisers and other staff are brilliant, there is a discrepancy between the feedback we get from members and the feedback the BMA collects internally – and look forward to seeing the results. If you have received the survey, please fill it in!

International Medical Organisations

We have been asking questions about the cost, ethics and risks of our continued membership of the World and European Medical Associations. These have now been largely answered, and oversight of who attends which international meetings and the value of each has been tightened. We have supported continued membership of the World Medical Association (WMA) on an interim basis for 1 year, whilst we push for reform. The WMA is reportedly keen for us to stay. We have offered to host the WMA General Assembly in 2021 at large cost to the association, and although we think this was a poor decision, the legal, financial and reputational costs of withdrawing are too great. We have instead supported measures to make the event more relevant to members, with fringe events taking advantage of the many international delegates from doctors’ trade unions and professional associations around the world.

. These have now been largely answered, and oversight of who attends which international meetings and the value of each has been tightened. We have supported continued membership of the World Medical Association (WMA) on an interim basis for 1 year, whilst we push for reform. The WMA is reportedly keen for us to stay. We have offered to host the WMA General Assembly in 2021 at large cost to the association, and although we think this was a poor decision, the legal, financial and reputational costs of withdrawing are too great. We have instead supported measures to make the event more relevant to members, with fringe events taking advantage of the many international delegates from doctors’ trade unions and professional associations around the world.

Regional Elections

We argued for a change to the timetable of the Regional Council elections, which in the current form would practically exclude thousands of final year medical students and rotating junior doctors from standing, being elected, voting and engaging. The argument was won and JDC is arranging for a more appropriate timetable.

The issue was raised to us by Dr Becky Acres, a member of Organisation Committee and a junior doctor working in East Midlands. If you have issues we can help with please get in touch. We will raise them and fight for you.