Junior Doctors Contracts

Wendy Morton Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman can do a lot better than that. We have been willing to negotiate since June. It was not me who refused to sit round the table and talk until December; it was the BMA, which, before even talking to the Government, balloted for industrial action. What totally irresponsible behaviour that is. If Labour were responsible, it would be condemning it as well.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement today and for all the work that he is doing to deliver a truly seven-day-a-week NHS, which we all really want for our constituents. Will he confirm that the BMA, the royal colleges, the Government and the wider NHS are all now agreed on the need to improve weekend care, which, as Professor Sir Bruce Keogh has said, is both a clinical and a moral cause?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a huge amount of support for doing the right thing for patients, which is why it is so extraordinary that the BMA has chosen to defend the indefensible, not to sit round and talk about how we can do this, as any reasonable doctor would have done and—to go back to the earlier question—to put out deeply misleading comments to its own members that have inflamed the situation and made it far worse than it needed to be.