'Militant' leader behind junior doctors' strike is ex-public schoolboy
Revealed: ‘Militant’ leader, 28, behind junior doctors’ strike is an ex-public schoolboy and director of his family’s multimillion pound investment firm
- Co-chairman of BMA Dr Robert Laurenson, 28, was made director of firm in 2013
- The business currently holds over £2million of investments and ran a golf course
The ‘militant’ leader behind the junior doctors’ strike is a privileged director of a multi-million-pound family investment firm.
Dr Robert Laurenson, who has called for a 35 per cent pay rise for ‘overworked and underpaid’ young medics, is listed alongside his parents and brothers at Westholme Investments Limited.
The business currently holds over £2million of investments and previously ran a Surrey golf course described as ‘one of the finest’ in the county.
Dr Laurenson, 28, was made a director in 2013, a year after he began his medical degree at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. It is understood he has no day-to-day duties with the firm and does not draw a salary or dividends and is not a shareholder, the Daily Telegraph reported.
Dr Laurenson, 28, was made a director of his family’s multi-million-pound investment firm in 2013, a year after he began his medical degree
Dr Robert Laurenson has called for a 35 per cent pay rise for ‘overworked and underpaid’ young medics
He took a year out of his own medical training to work as a freelance medic for an agency.
He claimed he did so ‘for money and well-being’ on his LinkedIn. Before reading medicine, he attended Sevenoaks School in Surrey, one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country which charges fees of up to £46,566 for sixth-formers.
Now the trainee GP is co-chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) junior doctors’ committee and is a key architect of their ‘juvenile’ strike campaign.
He and fellow leaders have been accused of not engaging with Health Secretary Steve Barclay as they strike for sky high pay rises.
It was first adopted by Doctor’s Vote, a Left-wing splinter group of the BMA that has helped come up with the demand for a 35 per cent increase.
BMA leaders have been accused of not engaging with Health Secretary Steve Barclay as they strike for sky high pay rises
The group shared a clip of dancing crabs before last month’s 72-hour walkout of 36,000 young doctors and wrote: ‘When your union doesn’t back down.’
That action saw over 175,000 appointments and operations cancelled in the most disruptive NHS strike this year.
Paul Bristow, Tory MP for Peterborough, who sits on the health select committee, said: ‘These juvenile videos are designed to intimidate junior doctors and show that they are not interested in resolving this dispute.
‘This is not about rewarding junior doctors with fair pay, it’s about playing politics and bringing down the Government.
The NHS and patients are collateral damage.’ While junior doctors’ talks with Whitehall have broken down, their consultants committee has pushed back a ballot on strike action to May 15 citing ‘constructive talks’.
The union said it would delay the vote for around a month, to allow talks to progress, prompting hopes of meaningful negotiations.
A source close to Steve Barclay said: ‘These actions are far more constructive than anything we are seeing from the junior doctors.’ A BMA spokesman said: ‘We are keen to reach an agreement as soon as possible rather than discuss the minutiae of the approach to talks and the personalities involved.
Our door remains open, and we hope the Health Secretary will be meeting with us soon with a serious proposal to restore junior doctor pay.’
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