NHS strikes: what happens when politics clashes with patient care?

Ministers can’t afford to back down over pay for doctors, as Sean O’Grady explains

Doctors on the picket line outside University Hospitals Bristol and Weston on Tuesday (PA)

Qualified doctors of all grades represented by the British Medical Association (BMA) are on strike again. This time it’s a ‘double strike’: consultants and their junior doctor colleagues are staging their first joint strike in the history of the NHS. Consultants are already out and will now be joined by junior doctors, until Thursday. Such is the disruption, only an emergency ‘Christmas Day’ level of service will be provided.

In response, the government is considering invoking minimum service level rules that would require some doctors and nurses to work during strikes in order to protect patient safety. Legislation giving ministers this power, which also covers other public services such as the railways, came into force in July and this would be its first application.

What do the doctors want?