Junior Doctors: Industrial Action

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The pressures in the NHS mean that there is a need for more doctors for all sorts of reasons, and we do not have as many doctors as we need at the moment. That is why this Government are training more doctors and putting an extra £10 billion into the NHS. The manifesto that the hon. Lady stood on just over a year ago would not have put that sort of funding into the NHS and would have meant that we were unable to train that number of extra doctors. We are doing that, but it takes time and we need to ensure that services are safe while we are getting there.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his balanced and reasonable approach in the negotiations despite provocation from people who really should know better. Does he agree that there cannot have been a single occasion in the history of the NHS other than this in which the General Medical Council—the body responsible for professional standards—has effectively had to intervene to stop a strike? Will he also admit that we might have underscored the centrality of Sir Bruce Keogh’s four clinical standards a little more when introducing the notion of the seven-day NHS?