NHS Confederation chief executive Gill Morgan may believe that the British Medical Association has recently been playing a 'constructive role' in policy development ('Resignation over MTAS row 'could weaken' BMA').
But to frontline doctors, the BMA and Royal Colleges have appeared to have been playing the role of quislings and collaborators with the alien-occupying army of New Labour apparatchiks currently involved in 'Murdering Medical Careers' (MMC) and the 'Medical Training in Australia Scheme' (MTAS).
The BMA and the Royal Colleges have failed to properly represent, or even seek, their members' views on these issues. Hence the necessary emergence of Remedy UK and the group of senior doctors around Professor Morris Brown in Cambridge. Michael Dixon is right that frontline doctors are angry and alienated. We want the BMA to take a more robust line so that innovations are subjected to proper challenge and scrutiny before being enforced top-down on a long suffering organisation.
The NHS could well be moving into a higher conflict mode as the flaws and contradictions of current health policies start to unravel, and as the public come to realise what doctors and allied health professionals have already realised.
Peter Davies is a GP at.Keighley Road surgery, Illingworth.
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