The internal market has led to the shambles of local pay and brought the NHS to the brink of disaster as a national crisis of funding and staffing looms, says Roger Seifert

WHEN THE government set out its objectives for the NHS in the mid-1980s it was clear that these involved saving public monies and privatising as much of the service as politically possible. A decade later local pay is the weapon by which a cheaper and dispirited workforce is commanded to deliver a diminished service. Government policies and management complacency have brought us to the point of staff striking over pay.