DOCTORS, nurses and other NHS staff marched through the city today to ramp up pressure on the Government to introduce an 'Oxford weighting' for pay.

The march, organised by public service union Unison, also called for an end to cancelled operations, long waiting times a slide towards privatisation in putting 'profits before patients'.

Hundreds of people, both hospital staff and NHS supporters marched from Cowley Road through the city centre and held a rally in Broad Street.

Last week bosses at Oxford Health Trust and Oxford University Hospitals called for the Government to review areas where pay weighting is applied after vacancy rates soared.

March organiser Ian Mckendrick, a nurse at the Warneford Hospital in Littlemore, said: "There is a national staffing crisis but it's particularly sharp in Oxford.

"In other parts of the country it is older people leaving the NHS but here it is young workers leaving, which means we are struggling now and won't have a workforce in the future."

The communications officer of Oxfordshire Unison Health Branch, added: "It's the high cost of living - we need an Oxford weighting, in London NHS staff can get an extra £6,500.

"It was debated in Parliament and MPs want it, our employers have called for it but the Government is the sticking point and we have to put pressure on them."

Labour city councillor Nadine Summers, who works as a cognitive behavioural therapist on the NHS, said it was 'crumbling before our eyes' and that the Oxford weighting was crucial.

On the eve of Saturday's march, health secretary Jeremy Hunt promised a 'well deserved pay rise' of 6.5 per cent for NHS staff.
It would be the first above inflation pay rise for health workers in eight years.

But the gathering crowd in Manzil Way said more funding was needed to solve Oxford's retention problems.

Kathy Pitson, a support secretary at the John Radcliffe's cardiology department for the past 19 years, said the Oxford weighting was urgently needed.

"We are having a real problem retaining staff because of the cost of living in Oxford.

"I couldn't even tell you how many vacancies we have in the department.

"Young doctors and nurses train here for maybe a year or two but then they get confident in themselves and realise the money is better elsewhere.

"We are losing good people because the money isn't there to keep them and it's having an impact on everyone else at the hospital.

Green party councillor David Williams, whose son is an NHS doctor in the north of the country, delivered a rousing speech to the crowds before the march got under way.

He said: "The NHS has been under attack on two fronts for the past 20 years - one through a lack of funding and the other through the threat of privatisation and a move towards an American style of healthcare, which doesn't work.

"It is on the edge of crisis, not just here in Oxford but across the rest of the country too."

Mr Williams said following health secretary Jeremy Hunt's pay rise promise, he could 'smell a general election.

He urged the public not to vote for the Conservatives and vote for a fully funded NHS.

He added: "We are also celebrating the 70 years of the NHS - its founder Aneurin Bevan said the NHS would last as long as there are people to defend it.

"Well we are here to defend it and we will do that until the very end."