So here we are in the 8th month of the doctors’ dispute with the Conservative government for pay restoration of 35% to repair salary losses over the past decade plus.
We are not talking about a pay increase just restoration, not unreasonable. How did this happen? – well, in short, because doctors are excluded from any of the pay awards made to other NHS staff because doctors pay is the remit of a so-called independent pay review body which takes care of doctors (and dentists) pay, except it doesn’t, and when it finally made a recommendation, the government deemed it unaffordable, so ditched it.
To put this in context, the judiciary were given 15% in 2018 without so much as a shot fired in anger; the doctors got 1% that year. The justification for such a high settlement for judges and barristers? – recruitment and retention.
That rings a bell, oh yes, there’s a crisis of recruitment and retention in the NHS medical workforce too.
Could the fact that many MPs have a legal background and vanishingly few a medical one be a factor? – a case of us and them?
During the pandemic which followed soon after, I don’t remember the judiciary stepping up to the plate, in fact the courts more or less closed down, at least for the first year, and are now getting back up to speed.
No judges or barristers were called upon to help turn patients who were on ventilators in ITU every 2 hours, wearing inadequate protection, up close and personal face to face, day after day, week after week, month after month. Doctors were going in to work every day, as was the whole health and care workforce, throughout that national nightmare, not working from the comfort of their homes on Zoom and in their pyjamas, too many paid the ultimate price in that first year.
Prime Minister Sunak recently stated, before he went off on holiday, that ‘a generous offer of 6% is final and no further talks will take place’ – hmmm, that doesn’t quite do it, does it?
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