The new chair of the BMA UK resident doctors committee has vowed he will ‘stand up’ for doctors and ‘deliver more progress’ in the face of continuing challenges.

Callum Parr (pictured above), who was elected as UKRDC chair on 3 October, has pledged to use his position to ‘listen, build and organise’, as resident doctors seek to press forward on gains made in the last 12 months.

Dr Parr, who is based in London and is works as an internal medicine trainee, described his election to the role of chair as an ‘honour’, adding that he was well aware of the scale of the challenges which continue to face resident doctors across the UK.

He added that UKRDC would continue to build on its strength in its efforts to ‘restore the value of our profession’.

He said: ‘I am under no illusions about the responsibility of this position – and I'm determined to stand up for the tens of thousands of doctors I now represent in a way that will deliver more progress and wins for them.

‘There is a huge amount to do. Pressure is piling on the profession from every direction: eroded pay, understaffed rotas, substitution of our expertise by an NHS management looking to cut corners, training bottlenecks and job insecurity are making the career we have chosen feel ever more precarious.

‘But this pressure is not inevitable: it is the result of decisions made by policy makers and by applying our own pressure in turn we can fight back and fix the problems that face us. We’ve done that before and we can do it again. That's why I ran for this position and that's what I intend to do.’

He added: ‘We have made progress in recent years and I thank my predecessors for their work but I now pick up the baton with a focus on implementing the 2026 deal in full and preparing for the Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration pay recommendation in April.

'We have already put the DDRB on notice, and if we don’t make sufficient progress on restoring our pay, a dispute will be unavoidable.’

Dr Parr’s election has seen him succeed former UKRDC chair Jack Fletcher, who led the committee during multiple strike actions and helped to deliver an agreement on a new pay deal for resident doctors in England.

In a message posted online shortly before UKRDC members cast their votes to elect their new chair, Dr Fletcher gave his thanks to all of those who had contributed to the committee’s many achievements.

He said these included securing ‘the largest structural pay reform to resident doctors' pay in well over a decade’, as well as commitments from the Government to create an extra 4,500 jobs, and the introduction of permanent contracts for locally employed docto