Government to impose new contract on junior doctors after strikes

THE Government will impose a new contract on junior doctors across England, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.

Mr Hunt said it had been a "difficult decision" to take but the NHS needed certainty, especially after Brexit.

It comes after junior doctors and medical students rejected a contract brokered between the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Government, with 58 per cent voting against the deal while 42 per cent voted in favour.

Some 68 per cent of those eligible turned out to vote - around 37,000 junior doctors and medical students.

Mr Hunt, making a statement to the Commons about the contract dispute, said Health Minister Ben Gummer will continue to look at how the working lives of junior doctors can be improved more broadly.

He added: "And nor we will let up on efforts to eliminate the gender pay gap.

"So today I can announce I will commission an independent report on how to reduce and eliminate that gap in the medical profession.

"I will announce shortly who will be leading that important piece of work, which I hope to have initial considerations from in September."

Ms Abbott urged Mr Hunt to reopen negotiations with junior doctors.

She said: "The Government should give talks with the junior doctors one more chance.

"If you crush the morale of NHS staff, you crush the ethicacy of the NHS itself."

But Mr Hunt criticised Labour for weaving a narrative which blamed the protracted dispute on the Government's handling of it.

He said a leak of WhatsApp messages published in the Health Service Journal revealed that members of the BMA had in fact intended to "draw out" the dispute.

He said: "This was a narrative that we have heard a lot in the last year.

"But, with the greatest of respect to her - and I do understand that she is new to the post - it is a narrative that has been comprehensively disproved by the leaked WhatsApp messages which we now know were exchanged between members of the Junior Doctors Committee earlier on this year.

"At precisely the time that the official opposition were saying that the Government was being intransigent, we now know that the BMA had no interest in doing a deal in February at the Acas talks. In their own words, they were simply playing a political game of looking reasonable. Those are their words, not ours.

"We also know that they wanted to provoke the Government into imposing a contract as part of a plan to tie up the Department of Health in knots for months.

"And in contrast to public claims that the dispute was about patient safety, we know in their own words the only real red line was pay."

He said the Government has been trying to broker a solution for more than four years and he has been left with no choice but to impose the contracts because it has become clear further negotiations will not work.