Junior Doctors: Industrial Action

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

First, my Lords, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement made in the other place. No one could be in any doubt that tomorrow’s strike will be a very sad day indeed for the NHS and the country. What is so frustrating is that it could, I am convinced, have been prevented. Yesterday the Health Secretary was presented with a genuine and constructive cross-party proposal to pilot the contract and potentially avert this week’s strike. A responsible Health Secretary would have grasped the opportunity immediately or would at least have considered and discussed it. However, all we had was a tweet yesterday morning from the Health Secretary saying, “Labour ‘plan’ is opportunism”. That was a deeply disappointing response.

The proposal was not a Labour plan. It was co-signed by two respected former Ministers, the Conservative Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, and the Liberal Democrat Member for North Norfolk, as well as the SNP’s health spokesperson, the honourable lady the Member for Central Ayrshire. It not only had the support of a number of medical royal colleges, including the Royal College of Surgeons, but, crucially, the BMA had indicated that it was prepared to meet with the Government and discuss calling off Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s action.

The Health Secretary has claimed that a “phased imposition” is the same as a pilot, but can the Minister explain how imposition on a predetermined timescale, with no opportunity to make changes to the proposed contract and no independent evaluation of the impact on patient care, can be the same as a pilot? Surely the Health Secretary should have welcomed independent evaluation. Surely he wants to know how changing this contract contributes in practice to his aspirations for more consistent emergency care across seven days of the week. And surely there was always a strong case for road testing the contract, thus enabling junior hospital doctors and managers in those hospitals to bring about changes in patient care and the outcomes that the Government want to see. The Government claim that any further delay will mean that it will take longer to eliminate the so-called “weekend effect”, but he has failed so far to produce any convincing evidence to show how changing the junior doctors’ contract by itself will deliver that aim.

On safety, NHS England’s update today says that the NHS is pulling out all the stops to minimise the risks to the quality and safety of care. We know that in many cases senior clinical staff will be stepping in to provide cover and ensure the provision of essential services. But there is no escaping the fact that this is a time of unprecedented risk, as regards what happens not just in the next two days but in the months and years ahead.

So can the Minister say how it will be safe to impose a contract when no one knows what the impact will be on recruitment and retention and when everyone in the service fears the worst? How can it be safe when we are running the risk of losing hundreds of women doctors, given the contract’s disproportionate impact on women—which, as the Minister knows, was disclosed by the belated publication of the equality assessment? How can it be safe to impose a contract that risks destroying the morale of junior doctors and to introduce a contract where there is no guarantee that effective and robust safeguards will be in place to control hours worked and shift patterns?

I noted that the Statement made some rather eloquent or exaggerated claims about the amount of money going into the NHS. I do not want to distract our focus from the essential point in question, but I point out to the Minister that we are on the longest period when the amount of real-terms growth going into the NHS has been less than 1% per annum, against an average increase since 1948 of 4% per annum. Our share of GDP spent on health is going back down to the days in the mid-1990s when we were spending about 6% of GDP. When you compare that to the demands being placed on the health service and the workforce demands that the new contract entails, it is very difficult to see how you can square the ambitions of the Secretary of State on the one hand and the practical reality of what resource has been made available.

Even at this late hour—and it is later than when the other place debated this Statement—I hope that sense will be seen and that the Government will recognise that there is a need to come back to the table to discuss not just the contract but the wider issues of the disengagement of the junior doctors, their concerns about the current approach to training, the fear that the imposition of this contract will lead to less well-trained doctors in the future, and indeed the issues around workforce and women doctors which have now been identified but on which I have yet to hear a convincing response from the Government. Even now, the case for getting round the table with the junior doctors is persuasive.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, instead of reeling off the litany of justifications and figures that we have just heard, is it not really time for the Secretary of State to put aside his pride, stop being pig-headed and listen to people in the national interest? He is clearly not listening to the junior doctors but will he not now listen to the sensible compromise proposal from other parties, including my own, which, I point out, does not undermine the Government’s objectives in the long term?

There are two big differences between the euphemistic “gradual introduction” that he is proposing and the pilot projects proposed by other parties. The first is that of course a pilot scheme can be independently evaluated. If the Secretary of State is so confident that this scheme will not damage patients or doctors, why is he afraid of proper evaluation? The proper and safe implementation of the new contract is surely worth a very small delay. Secondly, a pilot would mean that all junior doctors evaluated in a hospital would be on the same contract, whereas piecemeal introduction, which he is proposing, could mean that two doctors working side by side in the same department were on totally different contracts. Does the Minister not agree that this would be deeply divisive, as well as very difficult practically?

I am also very concerned about the idea of consultants manning A&E departments this week. While I am grateful to them for being willing to step forward in the interests of patient safety, I am concerned that it might work in the opposite direction in their own departments. Who will take the difficult decisions in, for example, cardiology or vascular medicine when urgent cases come up and the consultant is setting somebody’s broken finger in A&E? Has the Minister thought about that?

Should not the Secretary of State consider his position? Is he really the right person to solve this dispute? Patient safety, not the future of his own job, should be his prime consideration. This week, that will be at risk—website or no website.