Junior Doctors Contract Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Main Page: Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Conservative - Berwick-upon-Tweed)Department Debates - View all Anne-Marie Trevelyan's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Junior Doctors Contract
Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Alistair Burt
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. One example of why the Secretary of State believes that he is entitled to talk about misleading is that of the pay calculator that the BMA put on its website, which indicated that all doctors would suffer a 30% to 40% reduction in their salary, or something like that. The BMA was forced to take that calculator down when it realised that it did not reflect the truth. As we have seen, the Secretary of State has said that no doctor currently working legal hours will suffer a reduction in pay. There is an 11% pay increase on basic hours, and that is why he feels that there was an element of misleading. The hon. Gentleman is right about cutting out the middle man, which is why negotiations should restart. I am delighted that he supports that approach, and if that does not work, conciliation is there.
Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the loss of some overtime pay currently earned by junior doctors who work more than 72 hours a week should be seen firmly in the context of the safety of patients being treated by exhausted medics, and the long-term health of our junior doctors?
Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend is right. One difficulty with this is getting through what has built up during the course of the dispute, and getting to the heart of this issue, which is shared by everyone. There is no doctor in the land who does not want to work in safe conditions or for their patients to be treated safely. There is no Member of Parliament who does not want safety to be at the heart of this, and no one from the royal colleges or in senior executive positions in the NHS wants to compromise on safety. That is why we need to cut the number of legal hours, and ensure that doctors cannot work the number of consecutive nights or long days that they can work currently. The contract was outdated and it needs to change, and that is why people should sit down together.