Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations

Debate between Ben Gummer and Andrew Murrison

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Gentleman has long prized himself as a champion of working people, yet the current contract and the proposed contract by the BMA, which I presume the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) supports, prefers junior doctors over porters, cleaners and junior nurses, and it gives them better rates of pay, and premium rates that could not be enjoyed by lesser paid workers under contracts negotiated by unions that the hon. Gentleman supports. Here we have it: the final morphing of the Labour party into a party that prefers professionals over porters. That, I am afraid, is the party that he is now a member of.

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

I very much support the Government’s stance on junior doctors, while acknowledging that most doctors—junior and senior—work well beyond their contracted hours. Does the Minister agree that it is not junior doctors but their seniors, and seniors’ terms and conditions, who really set the tempo in our national health service?

[Ben Gummer]

My hon. Friend also speaks from experience. We have said right from the beginning that reform of consultants’ and junior doctors’ contracts will be critical in delivering seven-day services. On consultants’ contracts, it is important to make sure that consultants are providing clinical cover over weekends, not just for the benefit of patients but for juniors, who are often covering rotas without clinical cover from consultants with and to whom they might wish to confer and refer.

A&E Services

Debate between Ben Gummer and Andrew Murrison

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

My hon. Friend is right. Again, he highlights a local solution to a serious problem, and one that will not reflect what is needed in other parts of the country. That is why it is so important that we concentrate the additional money that we are providing on local solutions rather than on a top-down reorganisation.

The shadow Minister spoke about primary care. He does not seem to have listened to my right hon. Friend’s latest announcements on the new deal for GPs to increase the workforce, support new buildings for GPs, and improve access through local innovation. We are trying to reduce the pressures that we understand are on GPs and that go back many years, not helped by the GP contract signed by his Labour predecessors. We have a choice in government about whether we declare an ambition—the ambition on primary care declared by Labour at the last election was, the Royal College of GPs said, an

“ill-thought out, knee-jerk response”—

or we can try to do something about it, listen to concerns, and remodel care so that it helps patients. That is what the Government have done. My right hon. Friend has spoken about it, and the work is being carried on by the Minister with responsibility for primary care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).

[Dr Murrison]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ben Gummer]

I am not going to take any more interventions, if my hon. Friend does not mind, because I want to cover the additional issues raised by the shadow Minister. Before I do so, I would like to know whether the shadow Minister agrees with our target for 5,000 additional GPs, which can be afforded only because of the £8 billion that we have committed to the NHS—a commitment that, again, he has been unable to sign up to.

NHS Success Regime

Debate between Ben Gummer and Andrew Murrison

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

It must have been a great pleasure for my hon. Friend to have taken personal possession of the 2015 Act, which he helped steer through Parliament and piloted himself. It is a significant contribution to the cause of patient safety, which lies at the heart of the Government’s vision for the NHS.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his obvious grip on complex material. To what extent will the success regime take account of Kate Barker’s report on health and social care, recently published by the King’s Fund?

[Ben Gummer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. The success regime is locally based but must take into account the developing national opinion on the integration of health and social care. However, those can be properly integrated only on the basis of local considerations; this is not something that we can design from the centre, as some would wish.