Junior Doctors Contracts

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend speaks extremely wisely. I say to every junior doctor in the country that what they want from our NHS—safe service and safe care for patients across every day of the week—is what we want as well. This Government are committed to the NHS. We are this year putting the sixth biggest increase in resources into the NHS in its history, so we are putting our money where our mouth is. We want to sit down with the medical profession and make this work for patients.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend tell me whether my understanding of the Saturday pay dispute is correct? On the one hand the BMA wants time and a half throughout a Saturday. On the other, Her Majesty’s Government are offering time and a half between midnight on Friday and 7 on a Saturday morning, time plus 30% between 7 o’clock in the morning and 5 o’clock in the afternoon for those who have worked more than one in four Saturdays, time plus 30% between 5 o’clock in the afternoon and 9 o’clock, and time and a half between 9 o’clock and midnight. My constituents in Kettering had sympathy for the junior doctors but are totally opposed to the withdrawal of lifesaving emergency care, especially when the difference between the doctors’ position and that of the Government is so narrow.

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend speaks wisely, as ever, on this. The fact is that we have moved a very long way to meet one of the BMA’s biggest concerns: that there should still be premium pay on Saturdays. For doctors who work regularly at weekends this is a very good deal—better than that for pretty much anyone else in the public sector. That is why we think that the reasonable thing to do would have been to accept the deal and not to call these wholly unnecessary strikes.