Government's plans for private practice are "insulting"

doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7259.470/d

BMJ 2000;321:470 ( 19 August )

News extra

Government's plans for private practice are "insulting"

Linda Beecham BMJ

Consultants' negotiators have criticised the government's proposals in The NHS Plan to make new hospital consultants in England work exclusively for the NHS (5 August, p 317).

The government suggested that consultants could work for the NHS for "perhaps the first seven years of their career" and has proposed restrictions on the conduct of private practice for other consultants.

At a special meeting this week the negotiators who work for the 25 000 consultants in the United Kingdom described the proposals for an exclusive NHS contract as "unnecessary, contradictory, and irrelevant to the central issue of improving patient care."

The chairman of the BMA's consultants' committee, Dr Peter Hawker, said, "Consultants regard this proposal as irrelevant and insulting. They work extremely long hours for the NHS, and there is no evidence that the new generation of consultants currently in training will behave differently. . . . [Full text of this article]

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