Junior Doctors Contract

Lord Prior of Brampton Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made earlier today by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health in the other place. The Statement is as follows:

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the junior doctors’ strike. Earlier this month, the union representing doctors, the BMA, balloted for industrial action over contract reform. Because the first strike is tomorrow, I wish to update the House on contingency plans being made.

Following last week’s spending review, no one can be in any doubt about this Government’s commitment to the NHS, but additional resources have to be matched with even safer services for patients. That is why, on the back of mounting academic evidence that mortality rates are higher at weekends than in the week, we made a manifesto commitment to deliver truly seven-day hospital services for urgent and emergency care.

However, it is important to note that seven-day services are not just about junior doctor contract reform. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges noted that,

‘the weekend effect is very likely attributable to deficiencies in care processes linked to the absence of skilled and empowered senior staff in a system which is not configured to provide full diagnostic and support services 7 days a week’.

So our plans will support the many junior doctors who already work weekends with better consultant cover at weekends, seven-day diagnostics and other support services and the ability to discharge at weekends into other parts of the NHS and the social care system.

But reforming both the consultants’ and junior doctors’ contracts is a key part of the mix because the current contracts have the unintended consequence of making it too hard for hospitals to roster urgent and emergency care evenly across seven days. Our plans are deliberately intended to be good for doctors. They will see more generous rates for weekend work than those offered to police officers, fire officers and pilots. They protect pay for all junior doctors working within their legal contracted hours, compensating for a reduction in anti-social hours with a basic pay rise averaging 11%. They reduce the maximum hours a doctor can work in any one week from 91 to 72 and stop altogether the practice of asking doctors to work five nights in a row. Most of all, they will improve the experience of doctors working over the weekend by making it easier for them to deliver the care they would like to be able to deliver to their patients.

Our preference has always been a negotiated solution but, as the House knows, the BMA has refused to enter negotiations since June. However, last week I agreed for officials to meet it under the auspices of the ACAS conciliation service. I am pleased to report to the House that, after working through the weekend, discussions led to a potential agreement early this afternoon between the BMA leadership and the Government. This agreement would allow a time-limited period during which negotiations can take place, and during which the BMA agrees to suspend strike action and the Government agree not to proceed unilaterally with implementing a new contract. This agreement is now sitting with the BMA junior doctors’ executive committee, which will decide later today if it is able to support it.

However, it is important for the House to know that right now strikes are still planned to start at 8 am, so I will now turn to the contingency planning we have undertaken. The Government’s first responsibility is to keep their citizens safe. This particularly applies to those needing care in our hospitals, so we are making every effort to minimise any harm or risks caused by the strike. I have chaired three contingency planning meetings to date and will continue to chair further such meetings for the duration of any strikes.

NHS England is collating feedback from all trusts but currently we estimate that the planned action will mean that up to 20,000 patients may have vital operations cancelled, including approximately 1,500 cataract operations, 900 skin lesion removals, 630 hip and knee operations, 400 spine operations, 250 gall bladder removals and nearly 300 tonsil and grommet operations.

NHS England has also written to all trusts asking for detailed information on the impact of the strikes planned for 8 and 16 December, which will involve the withdrawal of not just elective care but urgent and emergency care. We are giving particular emphasis to the staffing at major trauma centres and are drawing up a list of trusts where we have concerns about patient safety. All trusts will have to cancel considerable quantities of elective care in order to free up consultant capacity and beds. So far the BMA has not been willing to provide assurances that it will ask its members to provide urgent and emergency cover in areas where patients may be at risk, and we will continue to press for such assurances.

It is regrettable that this strike was called even before the BMA had seen the Government’s offer, and the whole House will be hoping that the strike is called off so that talks can resume. But whether or not there is a strike, providing safe services for patients will remain the priority of this Government as we work towards our long-term ambition to make NHS care the safest and highest-quality in the world. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I, too, understand that the junior doctors have now agreed to call off tomorrow’s strike. Will the Government therefore apologise to the 4,000 patients whose treatments tomorrow will have been delayed by this going right up to the wire and the Government being so reluctant to go to ACAS for negotiation?

I understand that more detailed negotiations will now take place. Will the Government be entering those negotiations without prejudice and with the well-being of patients—and the well-being of doctors, upon which the well-being of patients depends—in their minds as they negotiate? Will they take very seriously the concerns that have been put to them by conscientious junior doctors, who work very hard for us?

I, too, have some scepticism about the data in relation to the so-called weekend effect. I echo the call of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for some independent research into the causes of the less good outcomes that undoubtedly occur in some places—to what degree, we do not know. I am quite sure that the junior doctors and their contract are not the only cause of any such weekend effect.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, first, I am very pleased to confirm to the House that in the past few minutes the BMA and the Government have reached an agreement, which will allow time for negotiations to take place. The BMA has agreed to suspend industrial action, including that planned for tomorrow, and the Government have agreed not to proceed unilaterally with implementing the new contract. By any standards, that is very good news.

The noble Lord referred to the brain drain. The best thing we can do in the short term is to sort out the contractual dispute with the junior doctors. That is absolutely fundamental to restoring morale among doctors. There is a feeling among some junior doctors that they are not properly valued. This goes way beyond some of the issues being discussed on the contract. It is about their training and a lot of other issues that bear on this.

There have been, I think, two studies published in the BMJ now about the weekend effect, along with studies in other parts of the world as well, such as the US. There is no doubt that there is a weekend effect. It is to do with lack of senior cover at the weekends, diagnostics and all those kinds of issues. This is a broad issue, which can be addressed only if we have a seven-day service. It is certainly not just about junior doctors.

We do not have much time but I will say this about the Secretary of State: patient safety is his motif. If he wishes to be remembered for anything, it is patient safety. That is why he agreed to go to ACAS when the BMA suggested it. He was absolutely right to do so and I congratulate both the BMA and the Secretary of State for coming to this agreement just in time.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I am not allowed by the rules to make any statement but only to ask a question, which is a pity because I wanted to make some comments about what the Minister just said. We will leave for another day the discussion of this mounting academic evidence that mortality rates are higher. They might be, but we need to investigate the cause-and-effect scenario. Leaving that aside, the Statement says:

“So our plans will support the many junior doctors who already work weekends with better consultant cover at weekends, seven-day diagnostics and other support services, and the ability to discharge at weekends into other parts of the NHS and the social care system”.

Is the Minister able to update us on whether we will have another Statement related to this or whether there are plans in process to deliver all that the Statement says?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

There is a recognition that the weekend effect is caused by many factors. It is certainly not just the ability of trusts to roster junior doctors at weekends but the absence of senior cover and the fact that much diagnostic capacity is not available at weekends. Of course, you also have to be able to discharge patients at weekends, which means that social care has to be working as well. To have a truly seven-day NHS requires a lot more people and resources to be available than just junior doctors.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister’s repetition of the Statement and what he was able to say additionally in response to noble Lords was very welcome. Does he agree that going back more than 20 years, to when the new deal for junior doctors was first brought in and we supported them on their concerns about Modernising Medical Careers, we on these Benches have never been lacking in support for junior doctors? We understand that when one is on the ward in a hospital at the weekend, very often the doctor who you see is a junior doctor. The point is that it is in the best interests of junior doctors and patients for seven-day working to be introduced, with proper rostering, rather than discriminating between Monday to Friday and the weekend as if they were different parts of what is in truth the same service. If we get it right, as my noble friend says, it should be possible to achieve such an agreement without bringing any detriment to junior doctors as a consequence, but rather by supporting them in the work that they have to do.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I thank my noble friend for those comments. One of the issues often raised by junior doctors is that they do not always feel properly supported at weekends. I think that having more seniors available at weekends—and late at night, for that matter—will be welcomed by junior doctors. There is also sometimes a misunderstanding in the public mind, as junior doctors can actually be quite senior doctors. A medical registrar is, by most standards, a senior doctor so junior doctors are not just people who have recently finished their training.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that during the build-up to this strike, which has now happily been called off, a great burden was put on to the shoulders of the NHS management? It is often much maligned and compared unfavourably with the doctors and nurses and other medical staff but, once again, the management staff have shown their ability to rise to the challenge. I hope that the Minister might feel it appropriate to give them a word of praise.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I am delighted to do that, having been the chairman of an NHS trust for 12 years myself and knowing that my noble friend was chairman of the Imperial NHS trust and that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is opposite, was chairman of the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust. Given the pressure and stresses on management and the complexity of its day-to-day role, I think that no other organisation is as challenging as a large acute hospital. Managers have to do their work in the full glare of publicity as well and it is extremely difficult, so I certainly join my noble friend in paying tribute to the extraordinary work that many of them do in the NHS.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, the Statement says that the Government’s ambition is,

“to make NHS care the safest and highest quality in the world”.

How is this to be achieved without enough high-quality doctors? Do the Government agree that, regarding the teams—the therapists and nurses, as well as the doctors—we need hard-working but contented staff?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that the biggest asset in the NHS is the people who work in it. That is not just doctors and nurses but therapists, allied health professionals and all those people such as porters, caterers and the like. We have an extraordinary workforce, which, sadly, we often take for granted. I am always struck by the results of the NHS staff survey, which are nothing like as good as one would expect to see in many other businesses, so I agree entirely with the noble Baroness.