Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have already written to Michael Bates to wish him well on this long walk and to support the work that he has done over many years for the Olympic Truce. He leaves me a bit of a hole in the House of Lords, where he has been doing fantastic work for the Home Office on security issues, so we wish him a good walk and a speedy return.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Q12. At Ealing hospital, the technically junior, though highly experienced doctors I met last week are dismayed that the Government’s equality assessment of their new contract finds that it discriminates against women—more than half of them. As the Prime Minister is a self-confessed feminist, leading a progressive Government—[Interruption.] So he says. Will he reverse this blatant injustice, which has no place in 2016?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for the question and backhanded compliment. The contract is actually very pro-women because it involves a 13% basic pay rise, restricts the currently horrendous and unsafe hours that some junior doctors work, and gives greater guarantees about levels of pay and the amount of money that doctors will get. I think that as people start to work on it and with it, they will see that it is very pro-women.