BMA (Contract Negotiations)

Debate between Justin Madders and Steve Brine

Monday 21st March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on the eloquent way in which she introduced the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. Under her stewardship, the Committee has gathered in a short space of time a reputation for allowing issues that are important to the public to be debated in this Chamber and for some great innovations in how democracy is dealt with in this place.

My hon. Friend helpfully set out the history and the research. She characterised as “rash and misleading” the conclusions drawn from such research about higher weekend death rates and staffing levels. We rightly say it is not easy to find a link between the cause and effect, as she mentioned in her opening remarks, but, despite a wealth of evidence showing that we cannot draw straightforward conclusions on cause and effect, the Secretary of State has proceeded on that basis. The proposals, which will see dramatic changes in how the health service will be run in the future, seem to be based on evidence that does not necessarily justify the conclusions drawn.

I will refer to contributions made by other Members. I congratulate the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) on being the only Conservative Back Bencher present. I know she is genuine in her concern about patient safety, but I was sad to hear some of the comments she made. I am afraid she repeated the mistakes that have characterised the dispute by demonising the BMA, portraying it as a militant faction. Let us not forget that these people have had 40 years without a strike, so can she not see that something has gone very wrong for them to decide to take industrial action and that they do have genuine concerns about patient safety?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on her contribution. She has great experience in this area and she spoke about the potential exodus of junior doctors that the proposals may mean. She rightly highlighted the serious questions about the proposals that need to be answered.

I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) still in his place. He spoke with great sincerity about how unhelpful the character assassination of certain members of the BMA has been and about how he believes—I believe most Members who have spoken tonight agree—that junior doctors are still willing and able to reach a compromise, but they have been met with an intractable Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) described what she considers to be a Government with a determination to sabotage the relationship with junior doctors. She has spoken to a number of constituents about issues of concern to them, and she was right to say—I wholeheartedly agree—that this is about valuing staff.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke with great personal experience and exposed the massive dichotomy at the heart of the proposals. She rightly paid tribute to the staff who, by their good will, add so much more value to the NHS than will ever show up on a balance sheet. I agree with her that the dispute causes massive anxieties about what the future holds for recruitment and retention of our staff. She is right that industrial relations is about sitting down and getting into a constructive dialogue. I hope that, as many Members have said tonight, that is still possible.

The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) spoke with the great experience that she brings to every debate on these matters. She correctly identified the Secretary of State’s wilful conflation of statistics. She highlighted that the ratio of trained nurses is a significant issue and gave good examples of how challenges were resolved in the past by dialogue in conflict—dialogue was raised numerous times by Members. She was right to ring the alarm bells about the fact that fewer than half of junior doctors apply to stay in the NHS and she talked with great knowledge about some of the current pressures in the system on finding staff.

Finally, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire). It is so good to see her back here and to hear from her about her recent personal experience of the NHS. She spoke with great passion and sincerity about the treatments and flexibility she was afforded by those staff. It is clear that she has received excellent treatment—she was hugely impressed by staff’s willingness to go that extra mile. The three words she highlighted should be reflected on by the Government: they need to treat staff respectfully, honourably and professionally. I could not agree more with that.

I am aware that in this Chamber we strive for a note of consensus, recognising that the main Chamber is where the theatrics, which do little to enhance Parliament’s reputation, tend to take place.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

They are right now.

[Justin Madders]

Yes, I am sure there are plenty of theatrics going on at this very moment. I will try to be measured in my response on behalf of the official Opposition, but it is our role to point out where we believe there are shortcomings in the Government’s approach, and on this occasion I believe that the Government have been found wanting. The sad reality is that we should not be debating this matter today at all. It could have been different if the Secretary of State had demonstrated a genuine desire to listen, engage and negotiate.

We all know that from time to time an employer will want to change the terms and conditions of their workforce. As a former employment lawyer, I know that change can be sometimes be difficult to deliver, but rarely—if ever—have I seen one side approach a negotiation with such stubbornness, intransigence and provocation. Whatever legal method the Government choose to draw this dispute to a conclusion, the reality is that it is far from over, and the well of resentment that has been built up by the Government’s approach will last for years. Everyone, including the BMA, has recognised the need to reform the current contract, but we have seen a Health Secretary giving the impression that he is looking for a fight, not a solution. In the past year he has described junior doctors as “militant”; implied incorrectly that they do not work weekends; insinuated that they are in some way to blame for deaths among patients admitted at weekends; questioned their integrity by suggesting that they may not be on hand to respond to a major terrorist incident; and insulted the intelligence of some of the brightest and best minds in the country by telling them that the 99% of them who backed industrial action had been somehow misled by the BMA.

I know how important junior doctors are to the smooth running of any hospital, how they consistently go the extra mile to deliver superb care—we heard that from many Members tonight—and how vital they are to the NHS’s future success. Yet they are repaid with insults. That is no way to treat any public servant, least of all those whose good will has kept our health service afloat as it has suffered from years of mismanagement and underfunding.

The dispute, unnecessarily inflamed by the Health Secretary, reached a new low last month when he claimed support for contract imposition from NHS leaders across the country only for many of them later to come out and confirm that that was simply not the case. That was the latest in a long line of statements he has made that do not stand up to any kind of scrutiny. Contrast that rapid evaporation of support when imposition was announced with the solidarity shown by representatives from every part of the health sector who believe that contract imposition was the wrong move to make. At least 10 professional groups, from the Royal College of Midwives to the Royal College of General Practitioners, have warned about the dangers of imposing a contract on junior doctors at a time when staff morale in the NHS is at rock-bottom.

If the Health Secretary, the self-styled patients’ champion, will not listen to the doctors and nurses, perhaps he will listen to the patients instead. The chief executive of the Patients Association, Katherine Murphy, said:

“The Government’s decision to impose contract terms on junior doctors is unacceptable. The health and social care system depends entirely on the great people who work in services across the community for the benefit of patients…It is clear that the acrimonious dispute over the junior doctors’ contract is unnecessary and damaging.”

Unfortunately, it appears that he is not listening to patients, either. He has tried to point the finger of blame at the BMA for the dispute, but if he wants someone to blame he should look no further than the mirror. His actions up to the decision to impose the contract are not those of someone trying to calm things down and reach a resolution: they are the very opposite.

What is in many ways just as unacceptable and unforgivable is the Health Secretary’s complete inaction after the decision was taken to impose the contract. A few weeks ago I asked him, in a written parliamentary question,

“what steps he has taken to avert further industrial action by junior doctors”.

The answer was quite telling. The truth is that since he announced imposition, he has not picked up the phone, opened his door or lifted a finger to try to avoid the most recent industrial action. There was virtually a month from the announcement of imposition to when the Government knew perfectly well that there was going to be further industrial action, but they did absolutely nothing to avert it.

We all need to remember that the NHS is ultimately there to serve patients, and they are now suffering because the Secretary of State has sat on his hands. It has been a complete dereliction of duty. Therefore, when the Minister responds, I ask him to confirm that the Government have not taken, and do not intend to take, any steps to prevent further industrial action.

I have some further questions for the Minister. Was a risk assessment of the effect on patient safety carried out before the decision was taken to impose the new contract? What assessment has he made of the likely impact of the contract on the recruitment and retention of junior doctors, given the crisis that the health service already faces? Does he accept that imposing a new contract that does not enjoy junior doctors’ confidence will further damage morale? Is he concerned by the 10-fold surge in inquiries by doctors planning to emigrate on the very day that the Government announced imposition? What legal advice did he take about how an imposed contract would work in practice? Will he tell the House when we will see the final terms and conditions? It is important for us to see that final detail, particularly as the BMA claims that a cost-neutral proposal was personally vetoed by the Health Secretary. We have never had an answer on that, so I should be grateful if the Minister would confirm whether the assertion is correct, and what the impediment to a deal was, given that it was cost-neutral and we already know that junior doctors work seven days a week.

The Secretary of State has sought, in recent months, to present the negotiation as a symbolic battle to unlock the delivery of a seven-day NHS. If that is the case, can the Minister explain why seven-day services are not mentioned once in the original heads of terms for the negotiations set out in 2013? The truth is that the Secretary of State only decided that the issue was about seven-day services half way through the negotiations when it was clear that doctors were going to put safety first, and he was looking for a way to divert blame away from his disastrous handling of the whole affair. Given that junior doctors already work seven days and seven nights a week, I cannot see how they can be the barrier to the safety of patients. Can the Minister name a single chief executive who has told him that the junior doctor contract is the barrier to providing high quality care 24/7? Even the chief negotiator whom the Secretary of State personally appointed, Sir David Dalton, says that changes to junior doctors’ contracts will have the least impact on arriving at seven-day working.

We all want a seven-day NHS, but no evidence has been provided about how the contract will do anything to further that ambition. Nothing coming even close to a credible delivery plan has yet been provided to set out how the seven-day NHS will be delivered. The truth is that the whole dispute has been used by the Secretary of State to detract from the challenges facing the NHS; those will only be harder to overcome thanks to his industrial relations approach, which is straight out of the Thatcherite 1980s playbook. Picking a fight with a group of people who will be critical to the future of the NHS is a mistake that I believe the Government will come to regret. The Secretary of State recently announced a number of measures aimed at making the NHS more open to learning from mistakes, and we of course support him in doing that, but when will he learn from his mistakes? When will he learn how to conduct a negotiation in a measured way?

On any analysis the Secretary of State has failed. He has failed to win the trust of the very people who run our hospitals, and the support of patients and the public. The Health Secretary may be content with a legacy of failure, but the way in which he has alienated a whole generation of doctors is something we will have to live with for many years to come.