Junior Doctors Contracts
Debate between Naz Shah and Jeremy Hunt(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
This morning, Dr Ben White resigned as a trainee doctor. He said it was
“to fight the contract on behalf of his patients and on behalf of the NHS.”
I also met junior doctors over the weekend, and their morale is really low. Does the Health Secretary believe that it can be safe for patients to impose a contract that risks destroying the morale of junior doctors and impacting on staff retention?
Mr Hunt
I will tell the hon. Lady what is unsafe for patients. It is not standing up to the BMA when it behaves in a totally unreasonable way with a Government who are determined to make NHS care safer. With the greatest respect to her, because she is new to the House, she should appreciate that previous Labour Governments did not stand up to the BMA, and that is why we are left with many of the problems that we face today.