The NHS medical director warned the latest action would be one of the toughest strikes in the history of the service, with “routine care virtually at a standstill”.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis warned of the mass disruption expected across the NHS with consultants providing just emergency cover.
Apart from a brief dispute over pensions in 2012, senior consultants last took major long-term action in 1975 over their contracts.
Consultants are senior doctors who see patients but are also responsible for the supervision of junior doctors and other staff.
How much do consultants earn?
The British Medical Association rejected a 6% pay rise for consultants – calling it “insulting” and a “savage real-terms pay cut”.
It called for a 35% pay increase as it claims that it is the figure take-home pay has declined by over the last 15 years.
However, the BMA is using an outdated measure of inflation. While using the consumer price index, as the ONS recommends, the real-terms decrease in pay since 2010 is 15%
The BMA says current basic pay scales see consultants earning £88,364 as a starting salary, with tiered increases up to £119,133 for consultants with 19 years’ experience
The Department of Health and Social care says that on average, consultants earn £127,228 a year
This included basic pay of £97,406 supplemented by £29,882 in pay for working beyond contracted hours, being on call, and for medical awards such as the clinical excellence award
Patients have been warned a “significant amount” of planned care involving junior doctors will be affected because other clinicians cannot provide cover or carry out supervisory roles.
The British Medical Association said consultants will provide “Christmas Day cover” – meaning only an emergency care level of service.
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NHS England said: “We are now entering the eighth month of industrial action across the NHS and staff continue to work hard to provide patients with the best possible care under the circumstances.
“Industrial action has impacted approximately 600,000 hospital appointments across the NHS with over 365,000 staff absences due to industrial action during this time.”
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How strike action impacts the NHS
What if you need urgent medical care?
The NHS states people should use NHS111 online to be assessed and directed to the right care.
If you do not have internet access, then the 111 helpline is available.
When someone is seriously ill or injured and their life is at risk, you should seek emergency care in the normal way by calling 999.
The NHS website states: “Regardless of any strike action taking place, it is really important that patients who need urgent medical care continue to come forward as normal, especially in emergency and life-threatening cases.
“Patients should take advice from 111/999 call-handlers on whether there are circumstances where it is suitable for them to make their own way to hospital.
“During strike days, it is likely 999 and 111 call handlers will be very busy, this may mean longer call response times.”
GP services and pharmacies will be running as normal.
Great-grandmother’s case highlights NHS dilemma
Carol Haworth is lying in a bed in Preston Hospital’s Emergency Department after breaking her left hip in a fall.
Dr Amogh Patel patiently explains that the 68-year-old great-grandmother will need immediate surgery to repair her shattered joint.
The surgery will fall on the first day of the nationwide NHS consultants strike
Carol’s case encapsulates the problems facing the NHS. She will have the emergency operation to repair her left hip, but has already waited nine months for surgery on her right hip.
And that wait will go on.
It is exactly the sort of life changing operation that will be cancelled in the thousands over the next 48 hours because of the consultants’ strike.
Carol remains philosophical: “We’ve had a lot of knock backs with COVID and this is only setting it back even further. So what can you do? It’s no good just squabbling about it, is it? You’ve just got to take it as it goes.”
‘My door is always open’
On the strikes by senior doctors, Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: “I hugely value the work of NHS consultants which is why we have accepted the independent pay review body recommendations in full, giving them a 6% pay rise this year, on top of last year’s 4.5% increase.
“My door is always open to discuss non-pay issues, but this pay award is final so I urge the BMA to end their strikes immediately.”
The man who served 14 years in jail for the murder of schoolboy Jimmy Mizen has been recalled to prison for breaching his licence conditions.
It follows reporting in The Sun newspaper that Jake Fahri, 35, was a drill rapper releasing music under the name TEN, who conceals his identity with a balaclava, and was played on BBC 1Xtra.
A Probation Service spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with Jimmy Mizen’s family who deserve better than to see their son’s murderer shamelessly boasting about his violent crime.”
Jimmy’s father Barry told Sky News: “We’re not gloating or anything, in a way it’s quite sad.”
His son bled to death after Fahri threw an oven dish at him in a south London bakery on 10 May 2008.
The dish shattered on his chin and severed an artery in the schoolboy’s neck.
Fahri was 19 when he was given a life sentence in 2009 with a minimum term of 14 years and was released on licence in June 2023.
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His music was played on BBC 1Xtra less than 18 months later, the Sun reported, adding that DJ Theo Johnson named him an “up-and-coming star”.
Jimmy’s father earlier said he and his wife Margaret were “stunned into silence” when they were told about Fahri’s music, which often features violent themes.
In one song, which appears to reference Jimmy’s death, he raps about “sharpening” a blade.
“Judge took a look at me, before the trial even started he already knows he’s gonna throw the book at me,” the lyrics say.
Another track includes the lines: “See a man’s soul fly from his eyes and his breath gone… I wanted more, it made it less wrong. Seeing blood spilled same floor he was left on.”
The BBC has said the artist’s tracks do not feature on any BBC playlists, and that a track which appeared to reference Jimmy’s death had never been played on its channels.
A spokesman for the broadcaster added there were “no further plans to play his music”, adding: “We were not aware of his background and we in no way condone his actions.”
A Probation Service spokesperson said: “All offenders released on licence are subject to strict conditions. As this case shows, we will recall them to prison if they break the rules.”
Jimmy’s parents founded the Mizen Foundation after their son’s death. The charity helps young people in London who are escaping violence.
Mr Mizen said: “It appears that if he’s been recalled to prison, he must’ve breached his licence conditions
The man suspected of abducting Madeleine McCann won’t face any charges in the foreseeable future, a prosecutor has told Sky News.
German drifter Christian B, who cannot be fully identified under his country’s privacy law, is expected to be freed from an unrelated jail sentence this year while police in three countries continue to search for evidence against him.
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: “There is currently no prospect of an indictment in the Maddie case.
“As things stand, the accused Christian B’s imprisonment will end in early September.”
Madeleine, aged three, was asleep with her younger twin siblings in the family’s Portuguese rented holiday apartment before mother Kate discovered her missing at around 10pm on 3 May, 2007.
Her parents were dining nearby on the complex with friends and taking turns to check on all their sleeping children every half an hour.
Madeleine’s disappearance has become the world’s most mysterious missing child case.
Philipp Marquort, one of Christian B’s defence lawyers, welcomed the prosecutor’s pessimism about bringing charges.
He said: “This confirms the suspicions that we have repeatedly expressed, namely that there is no reliable evidence against our client.
“We regret that we have not yet been granted access to the investigation files. We have not yet been able to effectively counter the public prejudice arising from statements made by the prosecutor’s office.”
Christian B, 47, is in jail and coming to the end of his sentence for the rape of an elderly American woman in Praia da Luz, the Portuguese resort where Madeleine disappeared.
In October, he was acquitted on a series of rape and indecent assault charges after a non-jury trial in Germany, in which several references were made to his status as the main suspect in the Madeleine case.
The prosecutor said he was awaiting the court’s written judgment before launching an appeal against the acquittal. He believes the trial judges were biased against the prosecution.
If successful, he could apply for a new arrest warrant for Christian B to keep him in custody until a retrial with new judges.
He said: “We hope that the Federal Court of Justice will decide before the end of the accused’s imprisonment. If the Federal Court follows our legal opinion, we could apply for a new arrest warrant for the accused’s offences, so that the accused would then remain in custody beyond September 2025.
Mr Marquort said the defence team would oppose the prosecution’s appeal against the acquittal.
Prosecutor Mr Wolters has said in the past that he believes Madeleine is dead and that Christian B was responsible for her death. The suspect denies any involvement.
The case against Christian B is purely circumstantial; he’s alleged to have confessed to a friend that he abducted Madeleine, he has convictions for sex crimes against children, he was living in the area at the time, his mobile phone was close by when the young girl vanished and he re-registered one of his vehicles the next day.
The prosecutor won’t say what evidence he has to convince him Madeleine is dead, but he admitted he is still trying to find forensic evidence to link Christian B to the girl.
Jim Gamble, former head of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, said he had expected the prosecutor to charge Christian B soon.
“He’s implied the whole way through that he has something more than the public are aware of,” he said.
“He’s made fairly definitive statements about whether Madeleine is alive or dead so you would expect their strategy to have been to charge him sooner rather than later.
“From what he’s said today I wonder if we’re witnessing the re-positioning of something to manage the disappointment that’ll come.”
Mr Wolters, who is based in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, is investigating the case with the help of Portuguese police and detectives from Scotland Yard.
An investigation, led by the Surrey and Sussex Police Major Crime Team, is under way and inquiries remain ongoing, police said.
Senior Investigating Officer DCI Kimball Edey said specialist officers “are working around the clock to gather as much information as possible,” and that the force’s “thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims at this unbelievably difficult time”.