What is the attitude of consultants to the health service?
DW: The BMA is notably pro-NHS on paper and has produced some remarkably strong material. For example the Board of Science published a follow up on the Black report about inequalities in health and it was an improvement on the Black Report. It actually went into great detail about the impact of unemployment on health. But if the line is pro-NHS, the reality is different. The reality of the NHS is that you work very hard until you’re about forty, then you become a consultant. You’ve reached power, and you can start making serious money if you do private work. So one of the major problems in London is absentee consultants – people who are supposed to be running a department, operating, planning services, encouraging morale, and the nurses don’t know who they are. They don’t come in from one year to the next. So their commitment to private medicine is a problem in that respect. However, to counterbalance that, there are a lot of truly full-time NHS consultants who do little or no private
