Junior Doctors’ Contracts

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Heidi Alexander

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

I do agree. I was talking about a seven-day NHS. A truly 24/7 NHS does not just mean consultants being more readily available; it means 24/7 access to diagnostic tests, social care, occupational therapists—the list goes on. If the Secretary of State has a magic pot of money to pay for all that, bearing it in mind that the NHS can barely pay for the work that it is currently doing, I am all ears. If his plan is to deliver seven-day services by spreading existing services more thinly, he should come clean and say so.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful speech. I bring her back to an earlier point which needs emphasising. At the moment trusts have to provide rosters that are not only fair but safe, so that junior doctors get time off. Now it seems that trusts will no longer have to pay attention to those rules and will no longer be fined if they do not follow them.

[Heidi Alexander]

There are very serious concerns about the proposed new contract, and my hon. Friend is right to highlight them.

The sad thing is that it did not have to be this way. Instead of using the dispute with junior doctors to suit his own political ends, the Health Secretary should have listened. He should have understood the depth and strength of concern before it got to the point where junior doctors feel as though they are the first line of defence in a fight for the future of the NHS. Instead of telling junior doctors that the BMA was misleading them, he should have respected their intelligence and responded to their concerns. At the very least, he should have heeded the words of the present Prime Minister, who said this about junior doctors when addressing a rally in 2007:

“There’s a simple truth at the heart of this: you came into the NHS not because you wanted to get rich or famous, but because you have a vocation about curing the ill, about serving your community.”

The Prime Minister went on to say in his conference speech a few days later:

“I will never forget walking on the streets of London marching with 10,000 junior doctors who felt like they were being treated like cogs in a machine rather than professionals with a vocation to go out and save lives”.

It is time the Health Secretary started treating junior doctors like the intelligent professionals they are. When I spoke at the junior doctors rally in London 10 days ago, I delivered a message for the Health Secretary. He was not working that Saturday so I repeat it for him now: stop the high-handed demands, show you are prepared to compromise and put patients before politics.