Junior Doctors Contracts

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Because on that one issue—Saturday pay—the BMA said in writing last November that it would negotiate, but it tore up that agreement and said that it was not prepared to negotiate even one iota. That was why the agreement fell apart. The BMA could easily, had it stuck to its word, have negotiated an agreement and we would not have a strike today. The Government have been totally reasonable and fair throughout. The BMA has not. It is the BMA’s choice to call these strikes. It should think again, because this is the wrong thing for patients and the wrong thing for the NHS.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Many of our constituents will be concerned, and indeed angry, at the thought that some of the most vulnerable people in our society—the old, the young and the sick—are being put at risk by what they will see as some of the most advantaged people in our society. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this could do tremendous reputational harm to the medical profession, and that that will do more to damage the morale of the medical profession than any bluster from the Opposition or the BMA?

[Mr Hunt]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Medicine is a profession. It has very important values attached to it, the most famous of which are the Hippocratic oath and “do no harm”. It is a step too far to say that in pursuance of a pay dispute and more pay on a Saturday, you are prepared to withdraw emergency care from vulnerable patients. That is the wrong call for the medical profession, when the alternative on the table is to sit down and talk with a Government who want to work with the medical profession to provide safer NHS care.