Doctors Want To Migrate To N.Z.

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30680, 20 February 1965, Page 20

Doctors Want To Migrate To N.Z.

(N.Z.P A - Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, February 18.

About a dozen doctors had inquired about prospects in New Zealand, New Zealand House said today. The New Zealand immigration office normally receives only occasional inquiries frorii professional meh.

Britain’s family doctors are involved in a dispute with the Government over their pay under the National Health Service.

The council of the British Medical Association last night endorsed a recommendation that all Britain’s 23,000 family doctors should withdraw from the National Health Service. The recommendation was made by the B.M.A.’s medical services committee—the doctors’ pay negotiators—after the Government offered a £5,500,000 pay rise instead of the £18,000,000 sought by the doctors.

The National Health Service was established by the first post-war Labour Government in 1948.

The family doctor is one of its mainstays. Other parts of the service include the hospitals, dental and optical services.

Doctors who leave the service must give three months’ notice. A full-scale withdrawal could not become effective before the middle of May. Dr. D. Stevenson, secretary of the 8.M.A., announced the council’s decision to reporters after nine hours of talks. He said it had been taken “against the background of letters and telegrams from family doctors all over their country expressing their solidarity behind the action which was recommended by the council.” The doctors were still meeting when Dr. Stevenson made the announcement. The B.M.A. leader’s decision was made after a strong attack on them in the House of Commons by the Minister of Health (Mr Kenneth Rooinson).

He accused them of being

tendentious in reporting to their members on the award and trying to make him and the Labour Government scapegoats for the frustration among the doctors. This frustration was not the Government’s fault, he said in a debate on the doctors’ pay issue, raised by the Opposition. It was caused by lack of collective initiative in the profession itself, he said.

The B.M.A.’s presentation of the case to their members had “smacked more of competition in militancy between various warring factions” than an attempt to find a solution.