BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CONDEMNS JEREMY HUNT -- Update: 29 April, 2016

DR MARK PORTER BMA

UPDATE 29 April, 2016 --
Junior Doctors are on strike at the moment because the Government will not pay the extra which is due to Saturday and Sunday work.


I wish them Good Luck and Success in winning the strike.

UPDATE:  19 July, 2015  --
After all his talk at the conference Dr Porter now agrees with Mr Cameron to introduce the 7-day roster.  This is a shocking revelation of a turn-around. 


British Medical Association (BMA) chief executive Dr Mark Porter condemns Jeremy Hunt’s old, repacked pledges in a keynote speech which do not answer the big question.

The Tories trying to kid British people into believing the unrealistic promise of a 7-day NHS.

Dr Porter said: “Tories have been full of easy headlines and lazy caricatures but refuse to provide the detailed documents needed.”

David Cameron pledge of a 7-day service and Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary, promised 5,000 doctors to fill in the shortage.

While they promise and pledge the public has not forgotten the axing of thousands of doctors and nurses in 2012. Tories seem to do a roller-coaster politics which cost twice as much with axing, pay redundancy, re-employ who needs to be trained and for three years hiring agency staff for three times as much.

The nurses union pointed out that Tories immigration policy is planning to boot out 30,000 nurses who do not live here.

At the annual BMA meeting in Liverpool Dr Porter pointed out that doctors already work a 7-day a week and David Cameron’ plans do not add up.

He demanded: “Show us the details of what you mean; Show us how the country will pay for it; Show us something real, because all we have seen so far is the pursuit of easy headlines.

“This government says we can just move a few shifts around. But what about the weekend surgeries, clinics and wards left without doctors where that’s done? We do not hear about that.

“Last Friday, we were told once again the GP surgeries will open 7-day a week, 12 hours a day. They talk about GPs doing ever more, who thousands already work in out-of-hours service, propping up the NHS.

“The Government is trumpeting its new deal.

“Who are you kidding? The proposal is neither new nor a deal, but old repacked ideas distracting from the central issue.

“We were promised 5,000 GPs by 2020.

“How will the new GPs be ready to work in five years time when it takes 10 years to train a GP?  They don’t say.

“How are they even going to recruit more GP trainees when hundreds of existing training posts are still unfilled? They don’t say.

“When will they provide substance on theories and recycled ideas, to focus the details of how they will support GPs already burnt out from overwork, in a service when more than 10,000 GPs are predicted to leave in the next five years?  They don’t say."

BMA estimated 30 per cent of doctors have suffered from ‘burn out’ and another 41 per cent fear they will suffer a ‘burn out’ in the near future.

Dr Porter stated further: “That the problem will only get worse because Tories haven’t gone real with the single greatest threat our patients face – a need for £30billion more in the NHS, not the £8billion promised”

He added: “We have a government run from cloud nine not from number 10.

“The crisis is real, but the solution shows little grasp of reality.”