A TOP BBC radio presenter came under fire yesterday for biased reporting — after she asked whether NHS workers should lose the right to strike.

After numerous members of the public on the Radio 4 call-in show Call You and Yours were grilled on strike ballot turnouts, Cardiff resident Peter Hall accused presenter Winifred Robinson of bias.

Calling into the programme, he asked: “Why are you asking this question that puts workers on the back foot? Why isn’t the BBC asking the question that is ‘Why has Jeremy Hunt rejected the report?’

“Why does the BBC choose to attack workers and not to ask the real questions about what’s happening in the world?”

The floundering Ms Robinson attempted to change the subject, asking Mr Hall about his wife’s experience of calling an ambulance during the last NHS strikes.

But Mr Hall was undeterred, added: “I’m saying the BBC is biased.” 

Ms Robinson repeatedly insisted “the question was chosen by the team,” and hung up on the persistent caller.

Caller Martin Heath drew attention to the high turnout in the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) ballot, but Ms Robinson turned the discussion to a lower turnout among Unite members.

“You’re putting them all together and you’re not taking them separately,” said Mr Heath.

“I’m talking about the RCM and I’m just putting their case.”

Kurt Baldwin, of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, suggested that if NHS staff lost the right to strike their pay would increase as the government would be forced to accept the recommendations of an independent pay review body.

It was left to Unite national officer Rachael Maskell to point out that NHS workers were already subject to an independent pay review, but that its recommendations had been rejected by ministers.

Tory MP Dominic Raab said that strikes should be declared illegal if fewer than 50 per cent of eligible workers — including those who did not vote — voted in favour.

But University of Wolverhampton professor of industrial relations Roger Seifert said that this would be illegal under international law.

“The UN charter says there cannot be an unreasonable barrier to strike action,” he said.