Health and Social Care Bill - NHS protesters rally outside British Medical Association (BMA) headquarters
Published: 24 February 2011
by TOM FOOT
NHS protesters rallied outside the headquarters of the British Medical Association (BMA) on Thursday calling on the union to step up its campaign against government health reforms.
Inside the building, on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, members of the BMA regional council had met to discuss its policy of “critical engagement” over Coalition reforms.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill proposes wide-ranging changes to the NHS including scrapping primary care trusts.
Dave Carr, a nurse at University College Hospital, said: “We want the BMA to move from critical engagement to direct opposition to this Bill. We need to kill the Bill.”
Council chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum said “there was certainly no question of acceptance, but neither was there outright rejection”. He said that scrapping primary care trusts was “an incredibly high-risk strategy”.
A Department of Health spokesman said: “Modernising our NHS is vital if we want to improve patient care. For many years, clinicians have said they want to be given more opportunity to lead service design and delivery.”