BMA settles in race discrimination cases
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《英国医生杂志》
The BMA has paid ?30 000 to settle racial discrimination claims brought jointly by five Indian doctors who say the organisation unfairly refused to back them in discrimination litigation against their employers. The settlement was reached hours before a Manchester employment trial was to begin hearing the case.
The five doctors will share the award, but, like the BMA, they will have to bear their own legal costs. The details of individual settlements remain confidential. The five are Fahtima Farook from Cardiff, Sheedhar Vasdo Vaidya from the East Midlands, Kumar Ghosh from Manchester, Vijay Jadhav from Kingston upon Thames, and Vanlila Bera from Birmingham.
Ghazan Mahmood, the barrister who represented four of the doctors, said they had been encouraged to come forward by the case of Rajendra Chaudhary, a urologist who won nearly ?m ($1.7m; �1.5m) in compensation from the BMA at a Manchester employment tribunal last June. His case was upheld by an employment appeal tribunal earlier this year (3 April, p 786). The BMA was found to have discriminated against him in refusing to support his appeal against the Specialist Training Authority.
"It抯 no coincidence that very highly qualified people are deciding to take a stand," said Mr Mahmood. "This was not about the money; it was about the fact that doctors will fight back if they are being badly treated by their union."
Parvez Akhtar, of Birchfields Solicitors in Manchester, who represented four of the five doctors, said he had heard from many more foreign doctors wanting to pursue claims against the BMA.
Vijay Jadhav, one of the five doctors included in Monday抯 settlement, has already won ?35 000 in damages from the secretary of state for health. He brought his own case against the NHS after the BMA refused to support him. He accused the BMA of delaying its advice to foreign doctors pursuing discrimination claims, in the hope that cases would run out of time before coming to a hearing.
Jeremy Strachan, secretary of the BMA, said the settlement was not an admission of liability: "Although the BMA was advised that we had good defences in all of these cases, we welcome the opportunity to draw a line under them in view of the potential adverse publicity, costs, and uncertainty that inevitably characterise litigation of this kind. We believe that this settlement is in the interests of all our members and will allow us to focus on demonstrating the BMA抯 commitment to equal opportunities for all doctors."
Nizam Mamode, who until recently was deputy chairman of the BMA抯 Central Consultants and Specialists Committee, said: "Yet again the BMA loses a racial discrimination case. This blows out of the water any argument that the Chaudhary case was a one-off. It抯 laughable to continue to pretend that racism isn抰 a structural, institutional problem in the BMA."(London Owen Dyer)
The five doctors will share the award, but, like the BMA, they will have to bear their own legal costs. The details of individual settlements remain confidential. The five are Fahtima Farook from Cardiff, Sheedhar Vasdo Vaidya from the East Midlands, Kumar Ghosh from Manchester, Vijay Jadhav from Kingston upon Thames, and Vanlila Bera from Birmingham.
Ghazan Mahmood, the barrister who represented four of the doctors, said they had been encouraged to come forward by the case of Rajendra Chaudhary, a urologist who won nearly ?m ($1.7m; �1.5m) in compensation from the BMA at a Manchester employment tribunal last June. His case was upheld by an employment appeal tribunal earlier this year (3 April, p 786). The BMA was found to have discriminated against him in refusing to support his appeal against the Specialist Training Authority.
"It抯 no coincidence that very highly qualified people are deciding to take a stand," said Mr Mahmood. "This was not about the money; it was about the fact that doctors will fight back if they are being badly treated by their union."
Parvez Akhtar, of Birchfields Solicitors in Manchester, who represented four of the five doctors, said he had heard from many more foreign doctors wanting to pursue claims against the BMA.
Vijay Jadhav, one of the five doctors included in Monday抯 settlement, has already won ?35 000 in damages from the secretary of state for health. He brought his own case against the NHS after the BMA refused to support him. He accused the BMA of delaying its advice to foreign doctors pursuing discrimination claims, in the hope that cases would run out of time before coming to a hearing.
Jeremy Strachan, secretary of the BMA, said the settlement was not an admission of liability: "Although the BMA was advised that we had good defences in all of these cases, we welcome the opportunity to draw a line under them in view of the potential adverse publicity, costs, and uncertainty that inevitably characterise litigation of this kind. We believe that this settlement is in the interests of all our members and will allow us to focus on demonstrating the BMA抯 commitment to equal opportunities for all doctors."
Nizam Mamode, who until recently was deputy chairman of the BMA抯 Central Consultants and Specialists Committee, said: "Yet again the BMA loses a racial discrimination case. This blows out of the water any argument that the Chaudhary case was a one-off. It抯 laughable to continue to pretend that racism isn抰 a structural, institutional problem in the BMA."(London Owen Dyer)