The NHS is on the brink

It is hard to comprehend how a group of professionals who profess their commitment to the NHS are about to inflict such serious damage when the system is already close to collapse. Over the next two days, junior doctors and consultants in England will jointly stage a stoppage unprecedented in the institution’s 75-year history. 

NHS managers say this will cause the further cancellation of thousands of appointments and operations. The NHS is in a crisis which will only worsen as winter approaches and the strains evident every year are exacerbated by a failure to make inroads into an already unsustainable backlog. 

The doctors’ unions maintain that the Government’s refusal to negotiate on the basis of their 35 per cent pay claim is the principal blockage. Yet full restoration to 2008 levels is an unrealistic demand that makes serious discussion about pay impossible.

An independent review body recommended a 6 per cent pay rise, plus an additional payment of £1,250 consolidated into base pay for the junior doctors. There might be scope for negotiation if the unions moderated their position; but they seem intent on harming the NHS and then blaming the Conservatives for the damage. 

What is dispiriting is the number of doctors who are happy to support this action yet are unwilling to see any connection between the parlous state of the NHS and the way it is structured and funded. 

If the BMA were to campaign for fundamental reform as part of its demands then their claim to be striking for the long-run benefit of patients, rather than to line their own pockets, might have some merit. As it is, their position is unconscionable.