On the picket line at St Thomas’ Hospital by Westminster Bridge in Central London, Ada Zembrzycka, a junior doctor and anaesthetic trainee, told News Line: ‘We are disappointed that we have to be here, but with an offer of 6% plus £1,250 we feel disrespected.
‘The government is not acting in good faith. No junior doctor wants to go on strike. There’s nothing junior about what we do, we carry major responsibilities.
‘There are waiting lists of 7.6 million people. The government is claiming it’s the doctors’ fault. But it was well above seven million before we even began our action.
‘The government hasn’t shown any good faith. They don’t care, but they should care! There won’t be any doctors left if they carry on the way they are going.’
There was a lively picket line at North Middlesex Hospital, where Clara, a junior doctors trainee in acute medicine, said: ‘We have seen a the service we are providing, declining due to lack of funding, staff shortages and increasing levels of burnout among all groups of staff.
‘We’re back on the picket line to campaign for fair pay and we hope that a fair pay offer can be made to end this dispute.’
On the picket line at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, east London, Lindsay Solera-Devchar, psychiatry registrar, told News Line: ‘It’s hard to know what’s going to happen, but they’re going to have to change their position because we’re going to continue striking.
‘We don’t want to disrupt patient care, but in the current pay conditions doctors are leaving the NHS and going to Australia where the pay and the working conditions are better.’
Tom Merreweather, junior doctor, said: ‘The Tory government keeps saying that the offer they’re giving us is the last offer we’re going to get.
‘But then every time it’s miraculously increased. This just gives us further encouragement that strikes work and the fight is not over.’
Kim Stallard, junior doctor, said: ‘We’re trying to ensure that they can’t ignore us, and that they are unable to not negotiate. I also think none of us want to disrupt patient care but unfortunately strike action seems to be the only way to make our voices heard because our aim is to improve patient care in the long run.’
John, another junior doctor, said: ‘This is a strike for the future of the NHS because without a drastic improvement in pay and working conditions there’ll be no staff left.
‘This is a strike in solidarity with all workers because we understand the need to get a fair settlement for all workers.
‘Personally, I would support the call for a general strike.’
Dr Andrew Meyerson told News Line: ‘Once again we’re on strike, for the fifth time, fighting for our patients, colleagues and our NHS.
‘After 13 years of this government, the NHS is being run into the ground. This government is holding patients hostage on the longest NHS waiting list in history.
‘They’re forcing people in desperation to pay for private healthcare. Before the Tories took over the NHS, there was no medical debt in this country, thanks to a well-functioning NHS.
‘But now, record numbers of people are taking out loans because the NHS care is unacceptable to them right now. Yes, this dispute is about pay, but also very much about the fight for the NHS. That’s why we have so much support from working class people, because they know we’re fighting to keep the NHS.’
Earlier, Dr Meyerson appeared on Sky News, where he made a powerful statement in support of the strike, saying: ‘I work in A&E, I love working in A&E, I love working in the NHS. We are seeing such an erosion in patient care, you should expect better in the sixth richest country in the world.
‘This is a pay dispute. I’m a rank and file member of the British Medical Association and I’ve got full faith in my union to negotiate on our behalf. They are fighting for us, I know that they are.
‘We’ve lost over 30% of our pay in the last 15 years, our consultants even more. We are seeing haemorrhaging levels of NHS staff leaving the health service, going to Australia, New Zealand, Canada because it’s becoming far too difficult to work in the NHS right now.
‘Beyond pay dispute, this is very much also a fight for the NHS. We heard that from a lot of consultants who are on strike as well.
‘Ten years ago, we had the number one health system on the planet, it’s a remarkable achievement. No other country in the world was delivering better quality health care for a bargain price.
‘Patients know this. Patients remember what it was like ten years ago. When they tried to get a GP appointment it took them 24-48 hours. They went to A&E it took them under four hours. Cancer referral under two weeks. The waiting list, dramatically lower.
‘Now what we are seeing, patients are suffering on the longest waiting list in NHS history – 7.6 million people now, that was just announced yesterday.
‘They are waiting two weeks to see their GP. They are waiting months to start cancer treatment. This is the sixth wealthiest country on the planet. This is unacceptable.’
The interviewer pointed out that Health Secretary Steven Barclay had written in yesterday’s Daily Mail telling doctors to ‘stop harming patients’.
Dr Meyerson replied: ‘For them to say we are harming patients – this is very much a last option for us. We did not want to be here, we are desperate to go back to work…
‘NHS waiting lists were pushing five million before the pandemic, then the disastrous pandemic response from this government, wasting billions and billions of pounds throughout the pandemic, and we saw 228,000 people die because of that.
‘That is a reflection of their bad performance during the pandemic. It didn’t have to be like this. And then afterwards, seven million before the industrial action took place.
‘No matter what we do, and this is the crux of it, no matter what we do in the next ten years, no matter how many experts in this country tell the government that their health policy is wrong, that it’s hurting patients, that it’s wasting your tax money, no matter what, they refuse to listen…
‘We’ve seen year after year our winter crisis, every single year it gets worse and worse and worse, to the point now where we are seeing 500 patients die every single week in this country for preventable delays accessing NHS emergency care.
‘Even on a normal day in the NHS, when there is no strike action, patients are not safe. We don’t have safe staffing on our wards. Right now, because £400 billion has been stolen from NHS budgets in the last decade, no plan for NHS staff, no plan for NHS social care. They promised to fix NHS social care.
‘They promised us 40 new hospitals, they promised £350 million a week on the side of the Brexit bus. Every single promise this government makes they never follow through on, ever.
‘And so, despite all of us within the healthcare community trying to stick up for patients over the last decade, saying that patients are being harmed, this is unacceptable in the sixth richest country on the planet. We need to have a change, they refuse to listen.
‘And you see what’s happening now, 7.6 million people on the longest waiting list in NHS history. Now people are using private health care because they are forced into it.
‘They are being held hostage by a government that refuses to invest in the NHS, refuses to fix the main problems in the NHS. A government that is allergic to the word “retention”.
‘They don’t want to talk about staff retention. It is so sad as a clinician on the front line witnessing this.
‘If I can be brutally honest with you, I don’t believe that the British people are safe with this government running the NHS. I firmly believe that. They have allowed the system to go from the best in the world ten years ago to among the worst in Europe now.
‘I think that’s just awful. They do not deserve to look after the NHS any longer.’
