Doctors threaten to strike as thousands of junior medics march over 'pay cuts' and changes to their contracts
- Junior doctors marched in London, Nottingham and Belfast on Saturday
- They were hitting back at earlier claims by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt
- He said BMA 'misrepresented Government's position and caused anger'
- Hunt wants to turn weekends and evenings to regular hours for doctors
Thousands
of junior doctors took to the streets of Britain yesterday to protest
against changes to their contracts, as the prospect of strike action
moved closer.
The
marches came as a British Medical Association spokesman issued a
walk-out warning, saying: ‘We are preparing to ballot our members on
industrial action if the threat of contract imposition is not lifted.’
The
junior doctors marched through London, Nottingham and Belfast, hitting
back at earlier claims by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt that they had
been ‘misled’ by the BMA over the contract proposals.
These junior doctors, who joined the
march from Waterloo Place, along Pall Mall and to Parliament Square,
held banners saying they are 'overworked' and 'underpaid'
Tens of thousands of junior doctors marched through central London today over new plans regarding evenings and weekends work
Yesterday
morning, Mr Hunt said the doctors’ union had ‘misrepresented the
Government’s position’ and ‘caused a huge amount of anger
unnecessarily’. ‘We don’t want to cut the pay going to junior doctors,’
he told the BBC. ‘We do want to change the pay structures that force
hospitals to roster three times less medical cover at weekends than they
do in the week.’
Mr
Hunt wants to raise doctors’ basic pay – but also turn weekend evenings
from 7-10pm and Saturdays into ‘plain time working’ for which they
would not be paid an anti-social hours supplement.
He
sees the changes as crucial to boosting staffing levels outside ‘office
hours’ and cutting deaths among patients admitted at weekends.
Earlier
last week, the BMA was forced to remove a pay calculator from its
website that had suggested some doctors’ pay would be cut by 30 per
cent. But junior doctors on the marches said they believed the BMA and
not the Health Secretary.
Dr
Anna Warrington said she thought her £45,000 pay packet, a third of
which comes from working anti-social hours, would be cut if the new
contract came into force.
Up to 20,000 demonstrators waved
placards which said 'Save our NHS' and 'Protect patients' as they
chanted 'Hunt must go' on the march
The row continues between Mr Hunt and
representatives of the British Medical Association (BMA) continues as
junior doctors rallied today
‘For
me, it would mean the number of anti-social hours I am paid for would
go down by half,’ said the trainee anaesthetist, who organised the
London march.
She added: ‘The vast majority of junior doctors live on the anti-social hours supplement. It represents a third of our salary.’
She
said police estimates that 15,000 to 20,000 turned out to march through
Westminster, showed ‘the degree of passion the issue excites’.
The
doctors also claim the new contract will undermine patient safety by
taking away punitive financial penalties for hospitals that make doctors
work too many hours.
The
marches were not organised by the BMA, which is currently refusing to
return to the negotiating table with Mr Hunt, but they did receive its
firm backing.
Mr Hunt is threatening to impose the new contract if no agreement can be reached.
