Consultants and junior doctors were out on a very rainy picket line outside the Royal Liverpool Hospital on Wednesday morning as they walked out in a dispute over pay.
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00:00 Consultants and junior doctors were out on a very rainy picket line here in Liverpool on Wednesday morning as they walked out in a dispute over pay.
00:11 It's not a decision that was taken lightly, it's something that everyone, the junior doctors and consultants will have agonised over.
00:17 But we can already see on days when there isn't a strike, there are gaps in the road due to people who have left the profession for financial or mental health or other reasons.
00:28 There's unfilled gaps which means we're not able to deliver the care we want to deliver and there's issues with services being underfunded.
00:35 So already, sadly, patient care in the NHS is suffering.
00:38 We're hoping with our strike action to highlight this, to highlight the changes needed and to make changes to pay and working conditions so we can retain and also recruit the best and the brightest so we can deliver better care going forward.
00:51 The British Medical Association say the government's pay uplift of just under 6% is an insult to consultants.
00:58 They're asking for an above-inflatory pay award for 2023.
01:03 It was a pay that had been effectively stuck and frozen for 10 years, all the way through the levels of more senior trainees in all different specialties,
01:10 particularly in the frontline specialties who are leaving the profession, leaving medicine or leaving the NHS to work elsewhere where the working conditions are better, where they can practice better medicine, deliver better care for a fair wage.
01:24 And then consultants as well who've also seen their pay frozen for 10 years and are trying to manage services and deliver care for the city or for the entire population without the resources to do this effectively.
01:39 And this has been going on for at least 10 years and a final straw has broken the back of the collective camel and we're out here to say this can't go on for the sake of the NHS, for our patients and for our colleagues.
01:52 Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said this week's coordinated and calculated strike action will create further disruption and misery for patients and NHS colleagues.
02:04 He went on, "Doctors who started their hospital training this year are receiving a 10.3% pay increase, with the average junior doctor getting 8.8% and consultants are receiving a 6% pay rise alongside generous reforms to their pensions, which was the BMA's number one ask."
02:22 This has happened on the watch of the Conservative government who've been in power for more than a decade and this has been building over all that time.
02:29 We'd like them to come to the table and make a credible offer. We think that we've made some very clear requests without any particular preconditions but that the pay offers so far have been insultingly low.
02:42 We've been offered a below inflation pay increase in the background of 10 years of essentially static pay and if a better offer is made we will elicit that.
02:51 The government broke down negotiation talks with junior doctors in England back in May. Over the weekend there were fresh talks between the government and consultants but at this stage an agreement has not been reached.