BMA (Contract Negotiations)

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Andrea Jenkyns

Monday 21st March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir David, for calling me to speak in this incredibly important debate.

There is no denying that this strike is totally unprecedented. No group of doctors has ever before been willing to walk out and put patient safety at risk over a dispute about pay, which is essentially what the dispute is about. It is about pay, about unsociable hours at weekends, about working the sort of hours that other people across the public and private sectors work every week. That is not to do down the incredible work that our junior doctors do. They work incredibly hard and entirely selflessly to keep us fit and healthy and I thank them for that but, like any other body of workers, doctors are not infallible.

Like the rest of us, doctors are driven by considerations of making enough to get by and to support their families, and of getting a fair reward for the work they do. Historically, they have got a pretty good deal, and like any other body of workers they have the right, through their union, to seek a better deal in pay and conditions. Seeking that better deal requires, as the petition notes, a meaningful negotiation between both sides in the debate.

I would like to cite the definitions of the two words that are so crucial in today’s debate. Meaningful is defined as “serious, important or worthwhile” and a negotiation is a “discussion aimed at reaching an agreement”. My argument is that it is the British Medical Association, and not the Secretary of State, the Department of Health or any of their negotiating team, that has failed in its duty to hold a proper, meaningful negotiation.

The history of the dispute is littered with resentment and half-truths. The BMA has repeatedly had the chance to negotiate with the Government and come to an agreement that is acceptable to all sides and, most importantly, that is safe for patients. Patient safety should be at the centre of the debate but, unfortunately, it has fallen by the wayside in the BMA’s entirely partisan quest to defeat the Government.

For many months we heard from the BMA that it was the Government and not the union who were not willing to come to the negotiating table. That is untrue, and it is backed up by the House of Commons Library’s account of the dispute, which I will not rehash in the short time we have available. Time and again the BMA has walked away from the negotiating table and balloted for industrial action, while the Department of Health negotiators have offered it the chance to come back to talks. The BMA even balloted for industrial action on the basis of the Government’s being unwilling to talk, when the Government had set a clear deadline for the BMA to come back to the table or risk imposition of the new contract. The BMA knew that imposition was a possibility, yet time and again did as little as it could to avoid it, all because it is driven by a desire, according to one of the doctors involved, to

“be the first crack in the edifice of austerity”.

Again, I do not want to go over old ground, but it is well documented that the BMA’s senior medics are Corbynites of the most militant kind. [Laughter.] Dr Chand, the association’s deputy chair, tweeted:

“Goebbels must be turning in his grave when he hears the lies and propaganda of Cameron.”

Dr Tom Dolphin congratulated the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on his victory and told him to take the fight to the Tories—if that is not partisan, I do not know what is. The BMA so misled its members when it put an utterly wrong pay calculator on its website, suggesting that doctors were in line to lose thousands of pounds, that the tool had to be taken down. Does that suggest that the BMA is taking the negotiation seriously? I would say that it does not. All the while, the Secretary of the State waited, and appointed the head of Salford’s trust to lead the negotiations, to ensure they were being led as well as possible by an expert in the field.

[Andy Slaughter]

Is the hon. Lady aware that 98% of junior doctors supported the BMA’s decision, and that her rather desperate attempt to portray the BMA as some sort of Scargill–like extremist organisation simply makes her look risible?

[Andrea Jenkyns]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I think he needs to learn his facts. I think that it was 98% of BMA junior doctors, not junior doctors in their entirety.

The imposition of the contract is not something that the Health Secretary wanted. He wanted to reach a meaningful resolution. He wanted the union, which got 90% of the things it asked for, to put its political gripes to one side, do what was best for patient safety and follow the will of the millions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Jenkyns]

First, the Select Committee on Health is on an away day today, otherwise there would have been more Members here. I should have been on the away day, but this is an important debate and I wanted to be here.

On the allegation that I have accused all junior doctors of being Corbynites, I said that key members of the BMA are strongly linked to the Leader of the Opposition. I was talking about not junior doctors but people on the BMA council.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will move on, because when someone is in a hole, they should really stop digging.