Junior Doctors Contracts

Debate between Roger Gale and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely agree with that, but I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that if that was the case, he has my mobile phone number and he could have contacted me, and he did not need The Sunday Times to be the first place I saw his proposal. If the people involved were genuinely serious about brokering a deal, that was not the way to go about it. We all have a duty to do everything we can to avert tomorrow’s strike, but his proposal to change the Government’s plans into pilots would mean, as he knows perfectly well, that seven-day care would get kicked into the long grass and would probably not happen. That would be wrong. As he well knows, we have a responsibility to patients to deliver our manifesto promises, and that is what we are going to do.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I wonder whether my right hon. Friend can refresh my memory. Is it not the case that under the new contract those who are going to strike tomorrow—it is by no means all junior doctors—putting patients’ lives at risk, will be earning more, rather than less, and for fewer hours, rather than more? Would he also remind me of any other public sector employee who gets time and a half for working on a Saturday morning?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The deal on the table is fair for junior doctors; there is higher premium pay for people who work regular Saturdays than there is for nurses, paramedics, healthcare assistants in their own operating theatres, fire officers, police officers and pretty much anyone else in the public or private sector. Under the new contract we are bringing down premium rates for Saturday pay, but we are making sure we compensate that with a 13.5% increase in the basic pay—to my knowledge, that is not being offered anywhere else in the public sector. That will mean take-home pay goes up for 75% of junior doctors. It is a very fair deal. It is designed to make sure that they are not out of pocket as we make changes that are safer for patients, which is why we should be talking about these changes and not having these strikes.