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Doctors Condemn Hunt In No Confidence Vote

Doctors Condemn Hunt In No Confidence Vote

The British Medical Association has passed a motion of no confidence in Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

The vote by the organisation, which represents more than 150,000 doctors and medical students, was held at the union's annual conference in Edinburgh.

Presenting the motion, Dr Jacky Davis said that Mr Hunt was leading the Government's "ideological attack on the service and on staff".

It was passed with an "overwhelming majority".

Dr Davis said the NHS had been "wrecked" by the Government, adding: "Leading the attack (on the health service) has been the Health Secretary. His main purpose seems to be criticising the service and undermining the staff.

"He is at the forefront of a new political blame game, blaming frontline NHS staff for the predictable chaos resulting from his Government's reforms and cuts."

He added: "The Health Secretary is ready to blame anything and anyone rather than put the blame where it really belongs - with his Government and their cuts, closures, rationing and the debacle of NHS 111 and most of all of course the infamous mess of the Health and Social Care Act.

"We are watching a good service brought to its knees by vandals in Westminster."

Dr Mark Porter, the chairman of the council at the BMA, accused the coalition of going "out of its way to act against the interests of patients".

A motion claiming the Government's reforms were "bad for patients, bad for the NHS and bad for the public" was also passed as doctors called for the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act.

In his first speech as council chairman, Dr Porter attacked calls for doctors to provide 24-hour care 365 days a year as "ridiculous" and warned the NHS could fail if medics were ignored.

He insisted the health service could "barely afford" its current model because it was struggling to cope with cuts and structural change.

NHS England's medical director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh has set up a forum to look into introducing a seven-day service and is due to report in the autumn.

But Dr Porter said: "Doctors are desperately trying to just deal with the sheer, unparalleled scale of demand on existing services.

"And we experience overwhelming frustration that we cannot achieve the changes and improvements that we can see are so necessary to deal with this pressure.

"Therefore, colleagues, above all else, our task this week and in the year ahead is to make sure that the voice of the profession is heard. If it isn't, the NHS will fail."

The votes came as senior doctors were expected to call for NHS patients to pay top-up fees for some services, arguing that the state can no longer provide everything for free.

They are expected to demand that a list of "core" services is drawn up to tell patients what they can and cannot expect from the health service.

Gordon Matthews, from the BMA consultants' committee, will say the public must be told explicitly "what can be funded from central taxation and what cannot".

"A publicly funded and free-at-the-point-of-delivery NHS cannot afford all available diagnostics and treatments," he is expected to tell the conference.

"Everyone recognises that we're in times of austerity, there isn't a lot of money around, while public expectations have gone up and up, medical treatments have become more expensive and there isn't an easy way to square the circle."

A survey found around two thirds - 65% - of medics feel less empowered because of red tape and inadequate staffing levels following changes imposed by the coalition.

Ministers claimed the Health and Social Care Act would put doctors in the driving seat but only two months after its implementation, the poll reveals disquiet about its effects.

Many doctors questioned by the BMA said they felt "hindered" from making improvements in patient services because of the new rules.

Of the 1,000 doctors surveyed, some 81% described pressure at work as "high" and GPs were the group reporting the highest level of pressure.

Dr Porter said: "It is a grave cause for concern that those who wanted to make improvements to patient services feel there are barriers prohibiting that.

"It is particularly worrying that the pressures so many doctors are experiencing on a daily basis appear to be getting worse.

"The Government wants to give doctors more control so they can work effectively for their patients, yet they often find this impossible in the face of an unprecedented funding squeeze, inadequate staffing levels and rising patient demand."

Dr Porter warned ministers not to blame parts of the NHS and to work more with staff to resolve the current problems. "Doctors should be encouraged and supported, not burnt out and drowning in red tape," he said.

"If the NHS is to survive another 65 years there must be a clear recognition that we are reaching boiling point with patient demand."

His comments come after a row over an A&E crisis, which the Government has partly blamed on GPs failing to do enough out-of-hours work.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "It is completely right that the Health Secretary demands the best possible care for patients.

"Following the findings of the Francis Inquiry and other recent reports, it is clear that the culture of the NHS needs to change and it is disappointing that the BMA union still doesn't accept that."

The NHS is ring-fenced from the Government's drastic cuts, with the coalition committed to delivering a real terms increase in health spending.