Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Liz McInnes
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Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations
Liz McInnes Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Ben Gummer
I cannot possibly add to the comment made by my hon. Friend, and I just hope the shadow Secretary of State takes note.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Strike action is always a last resort, and I can say categorically, as an ex-NHS worker, that no NHS worker wants to go on strike. We have here a complete failure of negotiation. The Secretary of State’s door may be open, but the inflammatory and insulting comments he made in the media this weekend do not exactly invite people to cross that threshold and talk to him. Given that he has manifestly failed as a negotiator, is it not about time he stood aside and let a trained negotiator deal with the BMA and come to an agreement, before it is too late?
Ben Gummer
I am not sure the hon. Lady has been listening to the statements made in this House and elsewhere.
Ben Gummer
I am not sure the hon. Lady has been listening because otherwise she would have heard that the negotiations have already been taken on by leading negotiators from NHS Employers and, latterly, by Sir David Dalton, one of the leading chief executives in the country. Significant progress has been made, contrary to what she has just suggested. Negotiations have worked. We have managed to nail down—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady shakes her head, but the fact is that Sir David Dalton has managed to secure agreement on every single point of contention other than pay rates for plain time, unsocial hours and Saturdays. This dispute on Saturday and the kind of results we are going to see across the country on Wednesday will, in essence, be about pay rates on a Saturday, with the BMA wanting preferential rates over nurses, porters, cleaners and other workers in the NHS.