04 July 2003
Hopes that a deal on consultants' terms and conditions could be struck were raised this week when the new health secretary invited doctors' leaders to a meeting to discuss the way forward.
John Reid's predecessor, Alan Milburn, had refused to renegotiate the consultants' contract that was rejected in England and Wales last year. Reid is also against renegotiation, but has stated he would be open to 'tweaking' the terms of the contract when the sides meet on July 4.
At the British Medical Association annual conference in Torquay this week, much of the rhetoric was confrontational. But while consultants' leader Paul Millar warned of industrial action if the contract impasse was not sorted out, he also praised the government's efforts to modernise the NHS.
'I want us to think about an NHS and a relationship with government beyond the consultant contract,' he said. 'The government deserves credit for the funding it is now putting into the NHS. We deserve credit for keeping patient services going by working, on average, many hours beyond our contract.
'It is time that we both earned credit by repairing our relationship for the benefit of patients and for our mutual benefit.'
Millar's conciliatory tone was in marked contrast to that of outgoing BMA chair Ian Bogle, who attacked the 'deprofessionalisation' of medicine. This was being caused by the increasing use of protocols, guidelines and government targets, he said.
These were demotivating the profession and intruding on the relationship between doctors and their patients. He also alleged that the government was turning a blind eye to trusts that altered their waiting list figures to make them appear better – a claim strongly denied by the Department of Health.
'Politically motivated national performance targets, which come with a threat of penalties and punishment for those who fail to achieve them, make honest people dishonest and have driven a wedge between doctors and managers,' Bogle said.
And the conference backed him, unanimously carrying a motion deploring 'the severe and unfair pressures placed on senior managers to produce results matching preset political targets, which can result in dishonesty'.
The Office of National Statistics has declared that foundation trusts will 'provisionally be classified in the public sector as central government bodies'. The decision comes in advance of what is likely to be a stormy Commons debate on July 8 when allegations will be repeated that foundation trusts represent the 'creeping privatisation' of hospitals.
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