Tom Dolphin from the British Medical Association says consultant doctors are on strike because their “pay has been eroded over the last 15 years” and professionals are going to Australia and New Zealand where they can earn “double” the wages. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Child pay has been eroded over the last 15 years. It's lost almost a third of its value
00:04 and people are struggling to recruit and retain consultants in the NHS because of it. What
00:09 we're seeing in departments all across the country is that there are vacancies and that
00:13 is affecting the service and our ability to deliver patient care. We've got a huge backlog
00:17 in the NHS, seven and a half million people waiting to be treated and we can't do that
00:21 without the staff that we need. We are competing in the international market for doctors. It's
00:26 a very portable degree. People know that they can work anywhere in the world pretty much.
00:30 We used to rely in the NHS on people coming from other countries like Pakistan, India,
00:34 Malaysia coming to the UK to work here. Now not only are we seeing our own doctors going
00:37 to Australia and New Zealand, those doctors are also going there instead because they
00:42 can earn double or more what they earn in the NHS. So that's why we're struggling in
00:46 the NHS to recruit and retain people in these posts. In the long term patient care is going
00:50 to suffer if we don't sort it out. Patient care is being delayed from today and things
00:54 are being postponed. We're keeping patients safe obviously. We are making sure that emergency
00:58 care is being covered today just as it is on Christmas Day. But in the longer term if
01:02 we don't sort this out we're not going to be able to get through this huge backlog of
01:06 people waiting to be treated.