Junior Doctors: Industrial Action Debate
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Tom Brake
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Junior Doctors: Industrial Action
Tom Brake Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Ben Gummer
I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend, which is why it would be helpful to have an unequivocal condemnation of the strike from the Labour party, which would send a message from this House that the withdrawal of emergency care is wrong.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
A junior doctor at St Helier hospital states that
“this contract is unfair, unsafe, uncosted, unevidenced, ineffective, unassessed for impact and risk, and unnecessary.”
With doctors depressed and demoralised, and with the revelation in David Laws’s book that the NHS required £15 billion to £16 billion, does the Minister agree that the failure to resolve this dispute is putting a huge amount of unnecessary pressure on the NHS, and that the Government and the BMA must settle?
Ben Gummer
This is what the Liberal Democrats have come to: quoting the books of their own losing candidates—a very odd situation. I think it sad for the right hon. Gentleman to come to this House not having read Sir David Dalton’s letter, which refutes every single one of the points he quoted at the beginning of his question. The fact is that the contract will be fairer and safer—better for patients and better for doctors.