Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations

Ben Howlett Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I am not sure the hon. Lady has been listening because otherwise she would have heard that the negotiations have already been taken on by leading negotiators from NHS Employers and, latterly, by Sir David Dalton, one of the leading chief executives in the country. Significant progress has been made, contrary to what she has just suggested. Negotiations have worked. We have managed to nail down—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady shakes her head, but the fact is that Sir David Dalton has managed to secure agreement on every single point of contention other than pay rates for plain time, unsocial hours and Saturdays. This dispute on Saturday and the kind of results we are going to see across the country on Wednesday will, in essence, be about pay rates on a Saturday, with the BMA wanting preferential rates over nurses, porters, cleaners and other workers in the NHS.

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

May I join colleagues in thanking the Minister and the Secretary of State for all their work in negotiating a contract, which is obviously a tough discussion to have? Although many of my constituents may have sympathised last year with the BMA’s case, patients and their families, including my father after a recent heart valve replacement, will be concerned that the BMA is not getting around the negotiating table and thus placing a lot of undue stress on the most vulnerable. Does the Minister agree that the BMA should seriously consider those patients as it protracts its negotiations?

[Ben Gummer]

If the BMA was truly representing its members, it would be thinking about patient welfare during the strikes. Just now, we heard my colleagues describe with great eloquence the kinds of effects on individuals that a strike will cause. These strikes will get us no nearer to a solution; the only way to come to a solution is by negotiation.