Many consultants ‘leaving UK for better pay and conditions abroad’

Thousands of consultants are on strike across England in a dispute over pay.

Consultant members of the British Medical Association stand on the picket line outside University College London hospital (PA) (PA Wire)

Hospitals are losing experienced surgeons and medics to places like Australia and Abu Dhabi because they can earn far more, NHS consultants have said as they took to picket lines.

Consultant gynaecologist Tracy Jackson, who works at St James’s Hospital in Leeds, was on the picket line at Leeds General Infirmary.

She told the PA news agency: “I never expected to be standing on a picket line. It’s not what I want to be doing. I want to be in the hospital looking after patients.

“But we didn’t see any other way of trying to get the Government to listen to us.”

Dr Jackson, who has been a consultant for nearly 21 years, said: “For me it’s about the – it would appear – impending destruction of the National Health Service.

“We’ve got a recruitment and retention crisis. Junior doctors are leaving to go to the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand.

“Consultants are leaving – one of my consultant colleagues is leaving. For me it’s about the future.”

She said the Government needed to understand that consultants can earn far more in Ireland and that other countries, like Australia, were making it very attractive for doctors to move.

UK consultants were prized due to the quality of the training, she said, adding: “For me it isn’t about pay, but it’s derisory: 6%.”

Speaking outside Leeds General Infirmary, eye surgeon Sakkaf Ahmed Aftab, who is the chairman of the British Medical Association Yorkshire consultant committee, said some hospitals were struggling to have enough cover.

He said: “I’ve been 20 years as a consultant and, where I work, I’ve lost two of my colleagues who have left the country and gone to Abu Dhabi – out of eight consultants – and, I’ve lost another one who’s gone to New Zealand.

“We are struggling to cover on-call.”

Mr Aftab, who practises in North Lincolnshire, said: “Yes, it is about pay in a sense, but it’s more about saving the NHS.

“I can probably earn more by leaving the NHS. But it’s more about you, your family and about me as I want the NHS to be there when I need it.”

He continued: “We need the most senior doctors to be there to train the juniors. If the senior doctors are leaving for Australia or the Middle East, or taking retirement early, or leaving the NHS completely, who will be there to train the next generation of doctors?”

Mr Aftab said medicine is central to his family but this is now changing: “I belong to a family of doctors. All my siblings are doctors. We all married doctors.

“But my son chose not to become a doctor. My elder brother’s two sons chose not to become a doctor.

“This is the first time in the whole family, basically.

“They are all going into finance and banking because they feel that we work too hard for too little reward.”

Around 100 consultants and their supporters gathered at the main entrance to Leeds General Infirmary.

Many of the stream of cars entering and leaving the site honked their horns in support.

Meanwhile, Ben Hockenhull, a consultant at St Mary’s hospital in London, said it was a difficult decision to join the strike.

“None of us want to leave our patients without care but we are doing this because without enough doctors and enough other clinical staff to do the job, the NHS will not be here to serve our patients,” he said.

He outlined why pay was such a focus: “Since I started medical school back in 2004, our pay has decreased by over 35%…

“I’m getting job offers from around the world… more than double my current remuneration package with added benefits and things like my professional expenses are paid for. Currently I have to pay for those myself.

“Watching my colleagues disappear from the UK, taking up those benefits packages abroad, moving to Australia and moving to New Zealand, moving to the Middle East, means that those of us that are left behind are the ones who are having to try and keep the service afloat.

“That’s making us more more stressed and more burnt out.”

Elsewhere, psychiatrist Polly Christodoulou, 41, who has been a consultant for three years and joined the BMA picket at King’s College Hospital in Denmark Hill, south-east London, said: “I think a lot of consultants are being tempted to move in to the private sector or abroad because the pay is better.

“We feel we are not paid properly for the level of skills and expertise that we have.

“A lot of us have trained for 15-years-plus to get to where we are and that is not being valued.”

She added: “I want to stay in the NHS. The NHS is where I trained. The NHS is what got me to where I am now and it is where I got my skills and knowledge.

“I want to be able to stay and support the NHS but it is becoming more and more difficult.”

Consultant surgeon Lindsey Barker, 59, of Deptford, south-east London, who was also on the picket at London’s King’s College Hospital, said the strike was “not so much about our pay but the impact of austerity on the health service”.

Doctors’ salaries have “disproportionately been affected by pay cuts because we are a soft target”, she said.

“We are largely perceived conservative with a small C and universally perceived as being very well paid.

“Things are being cut back so we can’t deliver what you want to be able to deliver, and if you don’t value the people who are doing that, then how are you going to value the service?”

Ms Barker has been a doctor for 33 years including 20 as a consultant.

She said staff “are having to manage a service that is increasingly cut”.

She added: “When we went into the pandemic we had been cut back in the NHS to such an extent that the only thing left to cut were salaries.

“It all puts a lot of pressure on staff. It is demoralising because you know you can’t deliver as much as you want to do.”