Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations

Debate between Ben Gummer and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

That is a question I am increasingly asking of those in the BMA’s leadership. They have agreed with Sir David Dalton that the remaining issue is about pay. Having said for several months that it was not about pay, they have now, in the end, come clean and said that it is about pay. That is what we are dealing with: pay rates for plain time and for Saturdays, where they wish for preferred rates over nurses and other “Agenda for Change” staff.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Junior doctors in my constituency are only very reluctantly taking action on Wednesday. They are supported by many of my constituents, who think that it is simply a disgrace that junior doctors are being forced to take industrial action because the Government are simply failing to address the legitimate concerns raised by the BMA. I heard the Minister say that his door is open, but what he is actually going to do to settle the dispute, and does he think it helps to denigrate the BMA in the Chamber this afternoon?

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Lady says the junior doctors in her constituency had legitimate concerns. They did. Every single one has now been answered in the negotiations between Sir David Dalton and his predecessors apart from one, and that is the one the BMA refuses to open negotiations on, despite having promised to do so in November last year. Yes, our door remains open, but the BMA has first to agree to talk to us, which it is again refusing to do.