Why has it rained on the doctors’ parade?

So despite all the dire predictions from the Government, the doctors’ industrial action turned out – in line with the weather – to be a bit of a damp squib.

According to the Department of Health, early figures showed that around just one in 10 patients had their treatments or operations cancelled and around three-quarters of GP surgeries operated a normal or near normal service.

Some suggested that it was because doctors had got cold feet in light of the opprobrium heaped on their heads by parts of the media. Others believed it was likely that some were uncertain that industrial action was the right course of action in the first place.

We interviewed two GPs – one who had voted for and one against the day of action. But they both said the same thing.

The deal the Government is trying to push through is unfair, that it goes back on the pension negotiated in 2008 and that they will end up paying a disproportionate amount of their salary on their pension compared with other public service workers.

It is just that one of them decided that protest in the form of industrial action was the only way to have their voice heard, while the other thought it might backfire.

The Health Department continues to say that the current pension deal is unaffordable and that the public should not have to wear it. Ministers also keep on calling it a strike to the utter irritation of all doctors taking part in the action.

Each side has put out ‘myth busting’ documents to prove that they not the other side are right on pensions.

The problem most observers see now is where to from here.

The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley insists there is no more negotiating to be done. It is also the case that industrial action has not proved to be a particularly fruitful exercise. But since it is illegal for doctors to strike it looks at best to be a stalemate.

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