BMA (Contract Negotiations)

David Amess Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

I call Helen Jones to move the motion.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Amess. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 121262 relating to contract negotiations with the BMA.

This is one of a number of petitions on the website about the junior doctors’ dispute, including the perennial favourite “Consider a vote of No Confidence in Jeremy Hunt”. We have chosen this one for debate because it was begun after the Government’s decision to impose the contract, and therefore relates to the position that we are in now.

It takes a lot to make doctors go on strike; their nature and their years of training mean they are inclined to stay with their patients. So, when facing the first doctors’ strike in 40 years, it is fair to ask how we reached this position and what can be done to resolve it. I am sorry to say that I think most of the blame lies with the Secretary of State and the atmosphere that he has created. In saying that, I want to make it clear that I do not think the current contract is perfect by any means. It is too complicated, and it throws up some anomalies in pay. However, it has proved impossible to negotiate changes to that contract properly, due to the atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion that has been created by some of the comments made by the Secretary of State.

That atmosphere goes back some years, but it reached its lowest point in July last year, when the Secretary of State said that the NHS had a “Monday to Friday culture”. I have read since that he has never actually visited a hospital at the weekend. If that is true, perhaps he should, because he would find that many staff are working. So incensed were they at the idea that they did not work weekends that they took to posting pictures on Twitter with the hashtag “#ImInWorkJeremy”.

The Secretary of State then went further by telling doctors to “get real”. I think that people who make life-and-death decisions every day, care for terribly sick patients, work with emergencies in accident and emergency while putting up with drunks and insults, work in special care baby units, and care for frail, elderly, often confused people know what reality is. They do so in a national health service under huge pressure. Much of the equipment is now out of date and there is a repairs backlog worth £4.3 billion, but the capital moneys available were cut by £1.1 billion in the Budget. Doctors are working with out-of-date scanners and computers that crash, and because the Government see all support staff as inessential bureaucrats, doctors are mopping their own operating theatres or doing data input that any competent clerk could do. I think that they know the reality of what they face. To be told that by someone whose gilded path to ministerial office went through Charterhouse, Oxford and management consultancy is beyond parody.

The Secretary of State, again, had to say more than that. He looked at weekend death rates, and jumped to the conclusion that they were caused by staffing levels. He said clearly:

“Around 6,000 people lose their lives every year because we do not have a proper seven-day service”.

He later used the figure of 11,000. Again, he said that was

“because we do not staff our hospitals properly at weekends.”—[Official Report, 13 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 151.]

I will spend a few minutes on the research quoted by the Secretary of State, because it does not actually prove that at all. The research paper that reached the conclusion that there were 11,000 extra deaths considered admissions from Friday to Monday, not just at the weekend, and considered death rates within 30 days of admission. Anyone who designs research will say that it is almost impossible to allow for all the things that could happen in 30 days. The researchers themselves did not draw the conclusion drawn by the Secretary of State. What they said was:

“It is not possible to ascertain the extent to which these excess deaths may be preventable; to assume that they are avoidable would be rash and misleading.”

In fact, being rash and misleading is exactly what the Secretary of State was doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

No, I am not going to withdraw that remark. [Interruption.]

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Helen Jones]

And she said they were endangering patient safety. It is that attitude among Government Members that is preventing a solution to the dispute. There are constant attempts to stigmatise staff and to accuse them of things that they have not done and are not doing. The Minister, for example, says that junior doctors are misled about their contract by the BMA. That is patronising, because it implies that they are not able to look at the evidence and judge for themselves. We have heard no attempt from the Minister to outline the Government’s plan B if some doctors leave and do not sign the contract. Well, I am not surprised that the Government do not have a plan B because they do not even appear to have a plan A.

I appeal to the Government to change course and to take steps to get the BMA and junior doctors’ representatives back round the table so that the dispute can be sorted out for the benefit of patients and for the benefit of the whole NHS. If they do not do that, we are really heading towards serious problems in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 121262 relating to contract negotiations with the BMA.