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Labour to stage debate to press for U-turn on junior doctor contracts

The Labour Party has called an Opposition Day Debate in the House of Commons this Wednesday (28 October) to urge the government to drop plans for a new junior doctor contract and re-enter negotiations with the BMA.

It will formally oppose the removal of financial penalties from hospitals that act as safeguards to protect staff from working excessive hours, and will press for guarantees that no junior doctor will have their pay cut as a result of a new contract.

Labour will also build on what the BMA has recently been campaigning for: withdrawing the threat of contract imposition originally put forward in September, which would help roll out the new contract regardless of widespread opposition.

Heidi Alexander MP, shadow health secretary, said: “Jeremy Hunt’s handling of the junior doctor contract negotiation has caused unnecessary anger. With morale in the NHS already at rock bottom, it is now a real threat to the recruitment and retention of NHS staff.

“We must not allow this government to take us back to the bad old days of worn-out staff, too exhausted to provide safe patient care. Next week’s debate will be a chance for Parliament to send a clear message to Jeremy Hunt – scrap your plans to impose a new contract and put patient safety ahead of politics.”

And shortly before the debate was announced, Dr Johann Malawana, the BMA’s junior doctors committee chair, wrote again to health secretary Jeremy Hunt asking for concrete assurances before the BMA agrees to re-enter negotiations.

It followed on from a letter Hunt sent to the BMA junior doctor committee chair on 8 October, in which he gave “categorical assurance” that the new contract would not be a cost-cutting exercise, as well as “absolute guarantee” that it would not impose longer working hours.

But Malawana claimed that, despite his set of unequivocal assurances, there was still a lack of clarity in several key areas.

“Our first concrete assurance centres om the withdrawal of the threat to impose a new contract. Your letter makes no mention of this, so we continue to seek urgent clarification from you as to whether the government still intends to persist with its timetable for the imposition of a new contractor.

“We fully understand that there are always likely to be conflicting positions during negotiations, however we do need your explicit reassurance that our proposals stand a realistic chance of being accepted and included in any future contracts,” he continued.

And although Hunt had provided several assurances in his letter, his position shifted considerably throughout the month, culminating in a BBC Radio 4 Today interview last week during which he said it was incredibly disappointing that the BMA had misrepresented the government’s position.

“It’s caused a huge amount of anger unnecessarily. We don’t want to cut the pay going to junior doctors. We do want to change the pay structures that force hospitals to roster three times less medical cover at weekends than they do in weeks,” he said.

According to the Guardian, health minister Ben Gummer MP added to this by claiming the BMA was putting patients at risk by asking junior doctors to strike “without even negotiating on their behalf”.

More recently, 4,000 people marched through Newcastle on Saturday (24 October) to protest against the new contracts, following on from previous rallies in central London.

The protests are all taking place ahead of a formal BMA strike action ballot set to run from 5 to 18 November meant to defend the current and next generation of junior doctors.

NHE has also put together an exclusive detailed timeline of the longstanding dispute between junior doctors and Whitehall dating back to 2013, including all key events in the contract row.

(Top image: Heidi Alexander MP, c. Gareth Fuller/PA Wire)