The 75th anniversary of the NHS is set to take place on Wednesday. However, the Government and the BMA are at loggerheads over doctors’ pay.
Later in July, junior doctors are planning to stage the largest walkout in NHS – five-days from July 13 to 18.
Consultants – the most senior doctors in the NHS – are planning to stage industrial action on July 20 and 21, when they will only provide scaled-back “Christmas day cover”.
This would be the first walkout by consultants in more than a decade, with the NHS’s most senior doctors demanding a 35 per cent pay rise.
True value of NHS
Mr Banfield said the “loss of trust” between doctors and the Government was the worst it had been during his 30 years in the NHS.
He added that he did not think the Government “recognises the true value of the NHS” and had “promised everything to the people but failed in their promises to the staff”.
“If it ends up having been the instigator of the managed decline of the NHS … that will be to the detriment of patients and this country,” he said.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “We hugely value the work of junior doctors and NHS consultants.
“We’ve been engaging with both the BMA junior doctors committee and BMA consultants committee on their concerns and it is disappointing that members have voted for strike action.
“We stand ready to open talks again. We urge them to come to the negotiating table rather than proceeding with their proposed strike dates.
“Strikes are hugely disruptive for patients and put pressure on other NHS staff, and we continue to call on the BMA to carefully consider the likely impact of any action on patients.”
