Junior Doctors Contracts

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Regrettably, there has not been only one occasion. In the October before the election, the junior doctors committee walked out of talks after extensive efforts to negotiate a new contract. We then had the independent pay review body process. Then—this was the most shocking thing of all—we had the decision of the committee to ballot for strike action before it had even been prepared to sit down and talk to me about what the new contract involved. That has been at the heart of so many misunderstandings about this contract and has led to so much disappointment on all sides. If the committee had sat down and talked to us, it would have discovered that we all want the same thing: a safer, seven-day NHS.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State tells us he has spent over three years on this matter—three years, and he has brought us to this unprecedented state of affairs. May I gently suggest to him that it is not the junior doctors who are the problem, but him? My constituents—hundreds of whom have written to me—overwhelmingly feel that he has been irresponsible and intransigent. He needs to get back to the negotiating table, lift the imposition and put the people who need A&E—in the next few days and beyond —first.

[Mr Hunt]

If the right hon. Lady is asking whether I will compromise in my pursuit of a safer NHS for her constituents and my constituents, the answer is I will not. I am the Health Secretary who had to deal with Mid Staffs and with a huge number of hospitals up and down the country that the Labour party, when in power, did nothing to turn around. We dealt with that. We put 27 hospitals into special measures. We have dramatically increased the number of doctors and nurses in our hospital wards because we care about a safer NHS. When there are issues about weekend care, the right thing to do is to address those issues, not to duck them.