Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I am sure that nobody who toddled into the Chamber after the urgent question started would expect to be called. That would be quite out of keeping with our parliamentary traditions. I think I need say no more.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I wonder whether the Minister can help me. The messaging I have heard from the BMA is that the dispute is nothing to do with pay. We have heard the issue described as a “nut” by the shadow Secretary of State, yet it has led to a national strike for the first time in 40 years and we face industrial action again. What is going on here?
Ben Gummer
That is a question I am increasingly asking of those in the BMA’s leadership. They have agreed with Sir David Dalton that the remaining issue is about pay. Having said for several months that it was not about pay, they have now, in the end, come clean and said that it is about pay. That is what we are dealing with: pay rates for plain time and for Saturdays, where they wish for preferred rates over nurses and other “Agenda for Change” staff.