Health and care sector latest developments
NHS Confederation responds to BMA announcing reballot for industrial action mandate
The British Medical Association (BMA) resident doctors committee in England will reballot its members to seek a mandate for another six months of industrial action.
The current mandate expires in January. The ballot will run from 8 December 2025 to 2 February 2026.
The ballot will ask doctors if they are prepared to take action over lack of jobs and severe pay erosion.
If returned with a ‘yes’ vote, the mandate for strike action in England would be extended to August 2026.
Dr Layla McCay, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, said:
“NHS leaders will be incredibly disappointed at the BMA’s decision to reballot its members for yet more industrial action.”
Prostate cancer screening should not be offered to most UK men, says experts
A screening programme for prostate cancer for all men in the UK is not justified, according to a hugely influential group of experts.
Instead they say only men with specific genetic mutations that lead to more aggressive tumours should be eligible.
That would rule out black men who have double the risk and men who have the disease running through their families.
CQC admits it falsely claimed not to know about trust maternity concerns
The Care Quality Commission has admitted it did know about concerns over the death of a baby at a trust being investigated for serious maternity failures after initially denying it had been informed.
Baby Harriet Hawkins died during her mother’s six-day labour at Nottingham City Hospital in 2016 following a series of mistakes by hospital staff.
Last year, the CQC launched an independent external review after Harriet’s parents Sarah and Jack claimed a right of reply statement provided by the regulator to the ITV documentary Maternity: Broken Trust was ‘dishonest’.
NHS fraud chief steps down
The chair of the NHS Counter Fraud Authority has resigned after just four months in the role.
A one-sentence note on the Department of Health and Social Care website states that Dame Linda Pollard has stood down as the chair of the NHS CFA with immediate effect due to ‘personal reasons’.
There is no information about her departure on the CFA website and Dame Linda’s LinkedIn profile still records her as holding the CFA position. However, Dame Linda contacted HSJ after publication to stress that she had decided to resign from the CFA in order to help care for her husband, who is gravely ill.
NHSCFA non-executive director Gaon Hart will replace Dame Linda on an interim basis until a permanent chair can be recruited.
Contract awards go ahead as ICBs plead they are running out of staff
Integrated care boards have told a court imminent redundancies meant they needed to be able to award more than £100 million in contracts while they still had the staff.
According to the HSJ, 22 ICBs have been trying to award new contracts for waste management services for more than a year but this has been held up by legal challenges brought by SRCL, which trades as Stericycle, an unsuccessful bidder for all 22 of the contracts.
The ICBs told the court that they needed to move swiftly to mobilise the new contracts as soon as possible. They told the court moving GPs and pharmacies over to the new suppliers would be ‘significantly more difficult by 2027, after a trial’ because ‘the ICBs are now facing major funding cuts and consequential redundancies’.
ICB staff told to work in the office
Several integrated care boards are telling staff they must work a lot more in the office.
Staff at Kent and Medway ICB were this week told they must work at least three days a week, including on ‘anchor days’ set by managers.
HSJ understands at least three other ICBs in different parts of the country are already implementing similar moves, or considering them.
It comes as all boards try to make large cuts to their running costs, and most have just launched voluntary redundancy schemes. Kent and Medway staff are able to apply for voluntary redundancy until 8 December.
