HOSPITAL consultants yesterday asserted their determination to defend patient care and oppose NHS privatisation.
At the BMA Consultants Conference motion 5, was overwhelmingly passed.
It expressed deep concern that ‘some NHS employers are using the current financial crisis to attack Consultants’ terms and conditions, pay and pensions.’
It called on the BMA to ‘take any necessary action to maintain national pay scales and terms of service for consultant staff.’
Mover Dr. Robin Arnold also moved motion 11 which stated ‘That this conference does not believe that a comprehensive health service can be maintained with a 20 per cent cut in budget and calls on the government to raise the basic rate of tax to ensure that health services can continue to be provided for all according to need, free at the point of delivery.’
Arnold warned that some trusts are looking at 30 per cent cuts. He said the cuts are actual real cuts that are savaging projects and therefore staff.
The motion was lost following the intervention of the Consultant Committee Chairman, Dr. Paul Mellor who advised delegates to vote against.
He said: ‘I find myself in agreement of all the proposer said, but not the increase in income tax.’
He was backed by previous consultants committee chair Dr. Jonathan Fielden, who claimed: ‘We can deliver efficiency cuts’, and opposed an increase in tax.
The conference went on to debate motion 50 from North East London Regional Committee, that stated: ‘This conference is appalled that payment by results tarrifs are being manipulated to reduce care and standards of staffing.
It concludes: ‘this meeting urges the Conference Committee to oppose the fee-for-items method of Payment By Results (PBR) funding, and calls for a return of block funding as the only way to provide quality care.
Mover Mrs Anna Athow said: ‘Payment by results is a funding mechanism designed to facilitate the market and break up public integrated NHS care.
‘What enabled NHS to provide clinical care equitably for all, according to need and free at the point of use, was funding by taxation and the integration of funding and delivery of the service to one publicly divided whole.’
Athow continued: ‘PBR is a tool to facilitate the market’ and she added that the new government is ‘pledged to much greater involvement of the private sector, and therewith the break up of the NHS.
‘Keeping tarrif uplifts at zero while inflation soars enables massive cuts.
‘The hospital then has to provide the same service for less money which can only mean employing less staff or going under.’
She concluded by calling for abandonment of payment by results and returning to integrated planning, funding and provision through direct funding, as in Scotland.
The motion was lost with a sizeable minority voting in favour after the intervention of Deputy Chairman Keith Brent.
He said: ‘I do not personally support payment by results, but the motion should be rejected. Do you believe we want to go back to block funding and that the treasury would release more money’.
