THE Merseyside Pensioners Association (MPA) toured medical bodies around London today protesting against the dismantlement of the NHS. 

Their first stop was the General Medical Council (GMC), the independent doctors’ regulator that will oversee physician and anaesthesia associates from December.

But the pensioners’ group described the medical associates as a “trojan workforce.”

The BMA warned that the regulation would mean the “dangerous blurring of lines” between doctors, who study for five years and undertake two years of placements, and assistants, who qualify from a two-year masters’ degree. 

The pensioners then took their protest to the Royal College of Nursing and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, before finishing at the Royal College of GPs.

MPA vice-chair Mary Whitby said: “We are protesting the dismantling of the NHS and restructuring on the US model, designed to deny us care and benefit big business. 

“We are highlighting the many symptoms of this denial of care, such as the downskilling of staff and replacing doctors and nurses with unqualified and dangerous [physician associates] and [anaesthesia associates]. 

“As Merseyside Pensioners Association, we know what the NHS used to be, what it should be, and we are heartbroken and angry at what it's been replaced with in the name of profit.”