Nigel Farage has revealed his mother suffered a suspected stroke in a worrying incident.
The GB News presenter spoke about his mother’s treatment from the NHS which occurred just a day before junior doctors began a 72-hour walkout, the biggest in the institution's history.
Speaking on his show, Farage, the ex-Brexit Party leader praised the NHS for the ‘second to none’ treatment afforded to his mother.
He said: “We had a little bit of a problem with my mother yesterday, a suspected stroke.
Nigel Farage has spoken on the NHS treatment afforded to his mother
GB News
“Probably a very good thing she had it yesterday and not today because we took her in and I have to say, for all the faults of the NHS, the treatment and testing she got was absolutely second to none.
“Well I wonder how many people today whose mothers and fathers may have similar problems but won’t get any medical treatment at all.”
It comes as the NHS begins three days of mass disruption due to tens of thousands of junior doctors going on strike across England.
The 72-hour walkout, which began on Monday morning, will see operations and appointments cancelled for thousands of patients as doctors join the picket lines outside their hospitals.
The NHS is facing pressure from junior doctors to increase their pay
PA
Nigel Farage says that while the NHS affords exceptional treatment to those in urgent need of it, the demands of junior doctors are simply too unrealistic.
He said: “I’m sorry junior doctors, but to say that your pay has fallen behind by 2008, therefore you deserve a 26 per cent increase in your salary is wholly unrealistic.
“It just doesn’t work.”
The BMA says junior doctors’ pay has fallen in real terms by 26% since 2008/09 and reversing this would require a 35.3% pay rise.
On Friday, Health Secretary Steve Barclay invited the BMA to talks but the union rejected the idea, saying there were “unacceptable” preconditions.
The preconditions are understood to have included looking at a non-consolidated lump sum payment for last year, whereas the BMA is seeking what it calls “full pay restoration”.
Junior doctors make up around 45% of the NHS’s medical workforce and consultants and other medics have been drafted in to provide strike cover in areas such as A&E.
Rishi Sunak said he does not think it right that “there is so much disruption” being caused by industrial action as he defended his administration’s anti-strikes legislation.
The Prime Minister, speaking to Sky News while in San Diego, US, said: “I don’t think it’s right that there’s so much disruption being caused to working families’ lives.
“That’s why I, as Prime Minister, introduced new laws to have minimum safety levels in our critical public services like rail, like education, like healthcare.
“It’s precisely because I do think people should not be able to have that disruption in their lives that I’m putting that new law through Parliament.”