This Blog backs the Tory government one hundred per cent in its determination to make hospital consultants, who are employed by the State and paid with taxpayer’s money, work to a pattern that suits the ailing, the sick and the dying, even if it does not suit them. It implores Jeremy Hunt to stand firm in the face of the wrath of the conservative elements of the medical profession and not to back down. He must recall the determination of Thatcher against the miners; a cause less worthy and in some aspects shameful, but an object lesson in execution.
Hospitals are like the fire, police or ambulance services. They must be fully operational 24/7. This blog believes there should be a three eight hour shift pattern bringing about the end of waiting lists for anything. It also believes that the notion that many of these consultants can and do moonlight in private practice, giving the minimum permissible hours to the NHS and the maximum to private treatment in order to make themselves rich, is morally bankrupt and should be stopped. Barbara Castle, the redoubtable favourite of Harold Wilson, tried and failed to end this abuse in the early 1970s. Time to have another go.