Junior Doctors — House of Lords, 2016-02-08
Topic: Health
David Prior (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer to an Urgent Question on junior doctor contracts given in the other place by my honourable friend the Minister for Care Quality. The Statement is as follows: "Mr Speaker, I will be delighted to update the House on the junior doctors’ proposed industrial action This Government were elected on a mandate to provide for the NHS the resources it asked for and to make our NHS a truly seven-day service. The provision of consistent clinical standards on every day of the week demands better weekend support services, such as physiotherapy, pharmacy and diagnostic scans, better seven-day social care services to facilitate weekend discharge, and better primary care access to help tackle avoidable weekend admissions However, consistent seven-day services also demand reform of staff contracts, including those of junior doctors, to help hospitals roster clinicians in a way that matches patient demand more evenly across every day of the week. In October 2014 the BMA withdrew from talks on reforming the junior doctors’ contract and, despite the Government asking them to return, did not start talking again until the end of November last year, in talks facilitated by ACAS. Throughout December we made very good progress on a wide range of issues and reached agreement on the vast majority of the BMA’s concerns Regrettably, we did not come to an agreement on two substantive issues, including weekend pay rates, so, following strike action last month, the Secretary of State appointed Sir David Dalton, one of our most respected NHS chief executives, to take negotiations forward on behalf of the NHS. Further progress has been made under Sir David’s leadership, particularly in areas relating to safety and training. However, despite agreeing at ACAS to negotiate on the issue of weekend pay rates, Sir David Dalton has advised us that the BMA has refused to discuss a negotiated solution on Saturday pay In his letter to the Secretary of State last week Sir David stated: ‘Given that we have made such good progress over the last 3 weeks—and are very nearly there on all but the pay points—it is very disappointing that the BMA continues to refuse to negotiate on the issue of unsocial hours payment. I note that in the ACAS agreement of 30 November, both parties agreed to negotiate on the number of hours designated as plain time and I hope that the BMA will still agree to do that’ The Government are clear that our door remains open for further discussion and we continue to urge the BMA to return to the table. Regrettably, the BMA is instead proceeding with strike action over a 24-hour period from 8 am this Wednesday. Robust contingency planning has been taking place to try to minimise the risk of harm to the public, but I regret to inform the House that latest estimates suggest 2,884 operations have been cancelled. I hope honourable Members from all sides of the House will join me in urging the BMA to put patients first, call off its damaging strike action and work with us to ensure we can offer patients consistent standards of care every day of the week".