Routine care in the NHS will be “virtually at a standstill” as it faces another two days of strikes.
Consultant doctors and hospital-based dentists will walk out for 48 hours from 7am on Thursday until 7am on Saturday.
It follows five days of strikes by junior doctors lasting from last Thursday to Tuesday morning – the longest period of industrial action in NHS history.
Other clinicians cannot provide cover for consultants and any planned care delivered by junior doctors or other healthcare professionals that requires even remote consultant supervision will need to be rescheduled.
This means a “significant amount” of planned care involving junior doctors will be affected this week, NHS England said.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis warned of the mass disruption expected across the NHS as consultants move to provide just emergency cover.
He said the strikes could have “the most severe impact… with routine care virtually at a standstill for 48 hours”.
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“Consultants will not only stop seeing patients themselves, but they won’t be around to provide supervision over the work of junior doctors, which impacts thousands of appointments for patients,” he said.
“It also follows on very closely from the longest-ever junior doctors’ strike, which itself affected thousands of appointments, with back-to-back action leaving NHS services with almost no time to recover.
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“We are working closely with the British Medical Association and British Dental Association to ensure that emergency and urgent care is prioritised and patients remain safe, but in the eighth month of industrial action, and with more than 600,000 appointments already affected, it’s becoming even more challenging to get services back on track after each round of action,” Sir Stephen added.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “Leaders anticipate serious disruption over the coming days despite their diligent efforts to prepare.
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Junior doctors chanted and sung about the health secretary as they kicked off their 72-hour walkout.
“A consultants’ strike is something of an unknown quantity and while there are plans in place for Christmas Day levels of cover in emergency care, the patience of patients may be tested as wider services are reduced and operations postponed.
“This, in essence, is two Christmas Days back to back and follows a working week’s worth of walkouts from other staff, so it’s very much a step into the unknown.”
The government announced pay increases for millions of public sector workers, including doctors, last week.
It said most eligible dentists and doctors will receive at least a 6% pay rise, while hospital consultants will receive a 6% rise.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the deal was the “final offer” and that there will be “no more talks on pay”.
But the BMA said the increase was a “savage real-terms pay cut” and called it “derisory”.
After the government announcement, hospital consultants said they will strike for two more days on 24 and 25 August.
Speaking about this week’s strike, Dr Vishal Sharma, chairman of the BMA consultants committee, said: “The responsibility for this industrial action lies squarely at the door of the government. It still does not need to go ahead.
“It is with a heavy heart that consultants have backed this strike, but we are doing so precisely because we care so deeply about patients and the NHS, which is currently failing to deliver the quality of care that patients deserve on non-strike days.
“The government must be challenged on whether they hold care for patients in the same high regard, given they are currently refusing to support and take steps to retain the expert clinicians responsible for giving people the care they need.”
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”.