Junior Doctors’ Contracts

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We have had a comprehensive and powerful debate, with 23 speakers and many more Members who would have liked to contribute if we had had more time. I would particularly like to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan), my hon. Friends the Members for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer), for Workington (Sue Hayman), for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) and for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq); the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon); and the hon. Members for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies), for Sherwood (Mark Spencer), for Erewash (Maggie Throup), for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) and for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns).

Members of all parties have spoken with great passion and praise for our junior doctors, who work tirelessly to deliver good quality services—despite the challenges they face in an NHS that is increasingly under pressure and under strain.

[Andy Slaughter]

rose—

[Andrew Gwynne]

I do not have time to give way, I am afraid.

I echo those sentiments of sincere thanks, but we have heard of junior doctors who already work weekends, already work nights, already work holidays and give their all for their patients. Despite all this, the junior doctors now face a situation that has left them feeling deflated, demoralised and devalued.

Patient safety has been a key theme of today’s debate. Some Members have valiantly leapt to the Health Secretary’s defence, but those voices have been far outnumbered by Members who are deeply concerned that this contract is unsafe for doctors and unsafe for patients.

Members have argued that the removal of the financial penalties that apply to hospitals that force junior doctors to work unsafe hours risks taking us back to the bad old days of overworked doctors, too exhausted to deliver safe care. The BMA says this safeguard, which is built into the current contract, has played an important role in bringing dangerous working hours down. Removing this financial disincentive to overworked junior doctors is extremely alarming, especially at a time when junior doctors are already coming under an enormous amount of pressure and strain. If the Health Secretary would just listen, he would hear junior doctors shouting loudly and clearly that they cannot give any more.

Many Members highlighted the protests and marches that have taken place throughout the country in recent weeks. We had only to catch a glimpse of the placards that were waved as thousands of junior doctors marched against the contract to understand that those doctors now fear for their own health and well-being. I was struck by one banner which read, “I could be your doctor tomorrow, or I could be the patient”, and those doctors’ concerns have been echoed by many Members today. How can the Secretary of State possibly say that he is acting in the interests of patient safety if the very people who work in the NHS say he is putting safety at risk?

Another argument that has been advanced today is that the contract is necessary to ensure that our NHS works seven days a week. Not only does that argument do a huge disservice to our NHS staff who already provide care seven days a week and 24 hours a day, and reveal just how out of touch some Conservative Members are with the realities of working on the frontline in our NHS, but it is wholly inaccurate. If this junior doctor contract were imposed in its current form, it would have the opposite effect, as many independent clinical voices have warned.

It is a bitter irony that the problems that the new junior doctor contract was supposed to be trying to address when it was originally proposed back in 2012—the need to introduce better pay and work-life balance—are the very problems that will be made worse should the contract go ahead in its current form. In letters to the Secretary of State, the presidents of a number of royal colleges and faculties have made it very clear that they share those concerns, but he presumably thinks that they too have been misled.

The Secretary of State said that he did not intend to cut the pay of any junior doctor, but his sums simply do not add up, and everyone can see through the spin. No one with a GCSE in maths can believe that no doctor will be worse off as a result of the new contract. Let the right hon. Gentleman come to the Dispatch Box in the minute that I have left, and answer this question. To what percentage of junior doctors currently working within the legal limits will what the Secretary of State has said today apply? Is it 50%? Less than a quarter? What is it?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

All of them.

[Andrew Gwynne]

In that case, I ask the Secretary of State to explain this. If the pay envelope is not increasing, and if the pay is not being reduced, how can these sums add up? They just do not add up, and I suggest that he go back to night school and learn some basic arithmetic.

We know that the BMA has been conciliatory today: it has offered to speak to the Secretary of State again. I ask him, please, let us take this down a notch. Let us get him talking to junior doctors again. The simple fact is that these are the junior doctors who work in our A & E; these are the junior doctors who work in every department of every hospital on the frontline. They come in early and leave late, they already provide care for seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and they deserve a lot better than this Government.