‘Doctors leaving Wales in their droves’ as BMA begins longest strike yet
Thousands of junior doctors in Wales have begun a four-day walkout – their longest yet – in a dispute over pay and working conditions.
A wet morning in Cardiff was not enough to dampen the resolve of the medics calling for their pay to be restored to previous levels.
At the heart of their calls is a warning that the NHS in Wales is losing medical professionals “in their droves”.
Co-chair of the British Medical Association’s Welsh junior doctors committee Dr Oba Babs-Osibodu also told Sky News that doctors were “refusing to come [to Wales], and that’s because of poor pay”.
Dr Oba Babs-Osibodu
“We’ve lost 29.6% of our pay over the last 15 years, so almost a third. And our work hasn’t got easier, it’s getting harder actually,” he said.
The Welsh government last year offered a pay rise of 5% but the union says the below-inflation offer is the worst in the UK.
More than 3,000 doctors are set to take industrial action during the 96-hour walkout, with appointments at hospitals and GPs set to be postponed across the country.
The strike started at 7am on Monday and will last until 7am on Friday.
‘Concerns about paying my bills’
Dr Lucy Hall is one of the junior doctors joining the protest outside the University Hospital of Wales – the largest of Wales’s hospitals.
She told Sky News that current salary levels were leaving her concerned about paying bills.
“Practically, it means that concerns about paying my bills are a bit too much at the forefront of my mind while I’m in work, but on top of that, we’re struggling to retain our staff,” she said.
“So doctors are leaving. We’re hemorrhaging them as such to other places where they can be paid more, or other professions where they can be paid more.”
Dr Lucy Hall
Dr Hall said staff rotas were “underfilled” and had “lots of gaps”.
“That means that patient care does suffer as a result of that because you just haven’t got the people to do the job,” she added.
‘Doctors are exhausted’
Dr Deiniol Jones, a public health registrar at Public Health Wales, told Sky News that the situation in the Welsh NHS is “very challenging”.
“Doctors are exhausted. There are not enough doctors at the moment, doctors are leaving the whole time. And we can’t provide the level of care that we want. And that’s being driven by low pay and poor working conditions,” he said.
“I don’t feel very well-valued and I don’t feel that the pay really reflects the skills and the training that I have, and the difficulty of the work we undertake.”
Dr Deiniol Jones
Dr Jones added that those on strike would “much rather be working and helping our patients”.
“But we have to do something about the situation and the hope is that this forces the Welsh government to come back with a fair offer and once we get that fair offer we can stop striking.”
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The message to new first minister Vaughan Gething from the BMA is that “this isn’t going to go away”.
“We’ve never been this united before, I’ve never seen the resolve of doctors this strong before,” Dr Babs-Osibodu added.
“And we’ll keep striking and striking and striking. We know this is costing the Welsh government millions of pounds, they need to come to the table with something credible.”
The University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff
‘Disappointing’
Cabinet secretary for health and social care Eluned Morgan said it was “disappointing” that doctors in Wales were taking further industrial action.
Ms Morgan said the government understood “the strength of feeling about the 5% pay offer”.
“While we wish to address pay restoration ambitions, our offer is at the limits of the finances available to us at present and reflects the position reached with the other health unions for this year,” she added.
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The Welsh health secretary also said the government would continue to press Westminster for extra funding.
But the Conservatives – the Senedd‘s largest opposition group – say the blame for the “unprecedented” strikes “lies squarely at the door” of the Welsh government.
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Harriet Harman has suggested a “mini inquiry” into issues raised by the grooming gangs scandal and called on Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch to discuss “terms of reference”.
The Labour peer told Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast that there should “openness” to a future probe as long it does not repeat the previous investigations.
In particular, she said people need to be “trained and confident” that they can take on matters “which are in particular communities” without being accused of being racist.
“I think that whether it’s a task force, whether it’s more action plans, whether it’s a a mini inquiry on this, this is something that we need to develop resilience in,” Ms Harman said.
The grooming gangs scandal is back in the spotlight after Elon Musk hit out at the Labour government for rejecting a new national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, saying this should be done at a local level instead.
The Tories also previously said an Oldham inquiry should be done locally and in 2015 commissioned a seven-year national inquiry into child sex abuse, led by Professor Alexis Jay, which looked at grooming gangs.
However, they didn’t implement any of its recommendations while in office – and Sir Keir has vowed to do so instead of launching a fresh investigation into the subject.
Ms Harman said she agreed with ministers that there is “no point” in a rerun of the £200m Jay Review, which came on top of a number of locally-led inquiries.
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However, she said there’s “always got to be an openness to further analysis, further consideration of what proposals would move things forward”.
She called on the Conservative Party to start “sensibly discussing with the government what should be the parameters of a future inquiry”, as they “can’t really be arguing they want an absolute repeat of the seven years and £200 million of the Jay inquiry”.
She said the Tories should set out their “terms of reference”, so “the government and everybody can discuss whether or not they’ve already got that sorted”.
Girls as young as 11 were groomed and raped across a number of towns in England – including Oldham, Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford – over a decade ago in a national scandal that was exposed in 2013.
In many cases the victims were white and the perpetrators of south Asian descent – with the local inquiry into Telford finding that exploitation was ignored because of unease about race.
The Jay review did not assess whether ethnicity was a factor in grooming gangs due to poor data, and recommended the compilation of a national core data base on child sex abuse which records the ethnicity of the victim and alleged perpetrator.
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Ms Harman’s comments come after the Labour Metro Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said he believed there was a case for a new “limited national inquiry”.
He told the BBC that a defeated Tory vote on the matter was “opportunism”, but a new probe could “compel people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account”.
Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister who has born the brunt of Mr Musk’s attacks, has told Sky News “nothing is off the table” when it comes to a new inquiry – but she will “listen to victims” and not the world’s richest man.
Sir Keir has said he spoke to victims this week and they do not want another inquiry as it would delay the implementations of the Jay review – though his spokesman later indicated one could take place if those affected call for it.
Tory leader Ms Badenoch has argued that the public will start to “worry about a cover-up” if the prime minister resists calls for a national inquiry, and said no one has yet “joined up the dots” on grooming.
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