BMA chair Dr Mark Porter has claimed ministers are trying to undermine trust in doctors and are ‘squandering the morale of decent people’, in a speech to an emergency summit today.
Dr Porter added that NHS is ‘crippled by denial’ as ministers expect it to deliver more, while coping with £22bn of efficiency savings.
Speaking at an emergency meeting of BMA ‘special representatives’ today, Dr Porter warned that the NHS is in financial crisis, saying: ‘It is a health service with a revenue larger than the GDP of many countries, but which would struggle to get a credit rating. Which suffers from debt, but is crippled by denial.’
‘The chancellor speaks of a “fully-funded” NHS but has come up with less than a third of the extra £30 billion in England alone that he admits it needs… His claims are fantasy, but so too are his solutions. He says we just need to be more efficient. So much more efficient that £22 billion worth of work that we do apparently won’t exist, or won’t cost anything, in four years’ time… We have a government that promises, and expects, the impossible. That ignores the inconvenient,’ he added.
Full story in Pulse 3 May 2016