AS a recently retired GP I would like to express my support for the junior doctors’ strike. I would also like to alert readers to the threat to the NHS this government poses.

It is clear that doctors get better contracts in Scotland and Wales, (never mind abroad) than the contract suggested by Jeremy Hunt, which would make junior doctors lives even harder. His declared aim is to provide seven day working for the NHS. He knows that for emergencies and other acute services, this is already the case.

Jeremy Hunt feels that providing seven day access to the full range of health services will save lives, without good evidence and for about the same price as the present service. If he was interested in saving lives he would be banging the cabinet table demanding improvements in the populations, health by a less awful national diet, reducing workplace and financial stress, more children’s centres  and perhaps even less polluted air to breathe.

No, what is going on is a persistent weakening of the last nationalised public service, to ripen it for takeover by the private sector. This has already being going on with very mixed results.

You might, if Jeremy Hunt gets his way, be offered an appointment to see a tired and disillusioned doctor imported by some private healthcare provider or other, on a Sunday afternoon at 4pm, whose short term contract guarantees you will never see the same doctor twice. Excellent for the shareholders of the global corporations whose financial health is Jeremy Hunt’s real motivation, bad for this country and its population.

Allow this to happen and we will say goodbye to the most cost effective and patient friendly health service in the world.

Listen to the junior doctors and be warned!

Dr Colin Bannon

Crapstone