Junior Doctors’ Contracts

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Chief executives of trusts and NHS employers have been very clear that this is about reform of contracts for both consultants and junior doctors, because the reduction in medical cover at weekends happens with both the consultant and the junior doctor workforces. Also, as I will go on to say, it puts huge pressure on junior doctors at the time when they do not have senior support and the ability to learn from it, and that is exactly what we want to sort out.

Junior doctors are not to blame for the weekend effect. The situation would actually be far worse without them, because they perform the lion’s share of medical evening, night and weekend work. In many ways, they are the backbone of our hospitals. However, the BMJ study this year showed that there is evidence that junior doctors felt clinically exposed at weekends, and nothing could be more demotivating for a doctor than not being able to give the standard of care they want for a patient.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman has prayed in aid the weekend effect and quoted Sir Bruce Keogh, his own NHS medical director. Is he aware that Professor Keogh has also said that

“it is not possible to ascertain the extent to which these excess deaths may be preventable; to assume they are avoidable would be rash and misleading”?

[Mr Hunt]

Yes, and I agree with that, but it would be equally rash and misleading to say there are no avoidable deaths. Professor Keogh was saying that lives could be saved if we tackled this. All these studies are saying that 15% more people die than we would expect if we had the same level of cover at weekends as we have during the week. Therefore, as he says, the moral case for action is unanswerable.