CONSULTANTS in England are holding two more days of strike action today and tomorrow, demonstrating their commitment to fix consultants’ pay in order to retain the NHS’s most experienced clinicians.
The strikes started at 7am today and end at 7am on Saturday, with two more days of strike action planned for 19th and 20th September, and yesterday’s announcement of a further three day strike on 2nd, 3rd and 4th October being the longest period of action by consultants so far.
Consultants have seen their take-home pay fall by more than a third since 2008/09, and Tories once again last month imposed another real-terms pay cut on consultants with its 6% uplift.
Dr Vishal Sharma, BMA consultants committee chair, said yesterday: ‘Our message to the Prime Minister is that we are serious about protecting the consultant workforce and thereby the NHS and patients. We are striking today, and will do so again in September and October…
‘Consultants are clear that they’re prepared to take regular action and politicians must be left in no doubt that our dispute will not go away simply because they refuse to negotiate. We will not be ignored.
There will be BMA picket lines outside hospitals all around England, including in London outside University College London Hospital near Euston, and King’s College University Hospital, Denmark Hill, Camberwell.
Picket lines around the country will also be manned at Manchester Royal Infirmary, Royal Liverpool Hospital, Friarage Hospital, Northallerton, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, Leeds General Infirmary, St James’s University Hospital Leeds, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, Northern General Hospital, Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, City Hospital, Nottingham, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, Bristol Royal Infirmary, Southmead Hospital, Bristol, Torbay Hospital.
- Parents of babies who died at the Countess of Chester hospital were ‘fobbed off’ by ‘unaccountable managers’, it emerged yesterday.
Parents of one of the babies killed at the hospital repeatedly tried to meet its medical director but their calls went unanswered.
Richard Scorer, a solicitor at the law firm Slater and Gordon, which represents the family, said: ‘In our view this failure to address parental concerns was shameful and another matter which needs to be investigated by a statutory inquiry with the power to compel witnesses and the production of documents.’
The British Medical Association stated on Sunday: ‘We have long called for non-clinical managers in the NHS and other health service providers to be regulated, in line with the manner in which clinical staff are by professional bodies.’
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