BBC’s In-Depth with Professor Colton: Unpacking the NHS Doctors’ Strike

Professor Nora Colton, Director of GBSH, was interviewed on the BBC News programme, The Context, about the UK doctors’ 72-hour strike demanding a pay rise and improved working conditions amid a cost of living crisis. Here is the transcript of the TV interview:

Christian Fraser (Chief Presenter, BBC TV News Channel): Well away from the Tory party conference in Manchester today, NHS bosses warn patients to expect extreme disruption at hospitals this week as junior doctors and consultants begin a three-day joint walkout in England. NHS England stated that the strike commenced this morning would bring non-emergency care to a near standstill. It’s more than 100 days since the Health Secretary sat down with the union leaders for pay talks, not a plan for the future. Consultants are being offered a 6%, junior doctors on average just under 9%, depending on their level. The cost of this strike to the UK economy is now stretching over a billion pounds. This morning’s front page of The Times reported that some NHS Trusts are spending £7900 a day for consultants covering strike action. Professor Nora Colton, Director of UCL Global Business School of Health, thank you very much for being with us, can i get you to comment on that stoary that was on the front of the times today, is that true, £7900 a day for consultants to cover strike activity?

Professor Nora Colton: Well, I don't know if that's true. What is more important is that our doctors feel the need to strike, that they don't feel like they can get what they need, i think there's a symptom of systematic need for change in the NHS.

Christian Fraser: We've got a government in Manchester who are saying we need to be prudent with the pennies, and that's why they're cutting part of the HS2 project, but on the other hand, they've not sat down to find a way through this for over a hundred days and now the cost is over one billion pounds - it's difficult to square that argument isn't it, when you look at the numbers?

Professor Colton: Absolutely, and what we see here is that we had a health system and the financing of that health system is very reliant on our political economy, and because we pay through our taxes, and that's how we fund our health system, we get short-termism, we have a political football that we play with our health system and yet our health system as we all know has become integral to everything we do, we're an ageing population, we have numerours non-communicable diseases, we're just not ageing well and we need more spending in healthcare.

Christian Fraser: We talked about the amount of money that's been spent. The Secretary of Health has said he's not prepared to sit down again and talk to the consultants and junior doctors so how do you find a way through this?

Professor Colton: Well I think the situation is very dire, becuase we have health workers who feel that their salaries haven't kept up with inflation. We have a health system actually where since about 2010, we have underfunded year on year, and that accumulation is estimated to be about £322 billion. And currently, most of what we spend on on an annual basis in the health system goes to paying salaries and medicines and these sorts of operational costs so we're not making any long-term investments that will help us to find other ways to medicate and treat our citizens so we rely heavily on this model that we've had since the beginning of when the NHS was founded in 1948, which is very much a hospital-based system where we're very reliant on doctors and nurses. So if we want to start to change, we then need to think more about prevention, diagnostics but to pivot, we have to be able to transition out and we seem to be stuck in this place where we focus a lot on weight lift, and so trying to move those through a hospital system doesn't allow us then to make critical investments we need to make in other parts of the health system, to actually improve things and to take some of the pressure off those dorctors and nurses and also allow us to start to think differently about our health and not just our healthcare.

Christian Fraser: Professor Colton, two different models - is there merit in both of them?

Professor Colton: Well, first of all, all funding mechanisms have pros and cons. I think at the end of the day, the vast majority of British people want to have care free at the point of delivery, and to do that they are willing to pay through their taxes. I think what we need to look at is how we can reinvent the funding of the NHS, of our health services and not put them into the general pool so they're constantly competing with other public services, education, and defence because this is an integral part of our wellbeing, our productivity and so we need to find ways that we don't constantly have our health service as the victim of our business cycle and that's what we have right now. 

Christian Fraser: Professor Colton, grateful for your time and your patience this evening, thank you very much indeed.

Follow us

• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Stay in touch

• Register your interest in the UCL MBA Health programme 
• Receive notice of UCL MBA Health open days, events and more

Register your interest

Contact us

Have a question about the UCL Global Business School for Health? Contact us using the link below.

Contact us