Fury as Jeremy Hunt imposes controversial new contract on junior doctors

The British Medical Association has lambasted government’s decision to impose a new contract on junior doctors working in the NHS.

The protest, which begins at 5.30pm today, will he held after strikes took place across the country yesterday.

But Mr Hunt said he had “no choice” but to impose the contracts after the union refused to compromise.

Sir Andrew Cash, head of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (FT), said: “I support the improved offer made this week as fair and reasonable, but I do not support imposition”, while Andrew Foster, of Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS FT, said: “I have not supported contract imposition”.

“We have to contemplate if we can work in a system that stretches doctors in such a way that patients are put at risk and where we will be unable to give the right amount of time to family life for our son”, he said.

Explaining his decision in the House of Commons, Mr Hunt accused the BMA of avoiding negotiations until the last moment and said that more than 90% of what had since been agreed through talks would form the basis for the new contract.

Thousands of junior doctors have walked off the job in England in a disput… That is a matter for the Secretary of State for Health.

The Health Secretary said the process had created “considerable dismay” among junior doctors but he felt that given time, the contract would be accepted as a good thing.

But the backlash was swift, with the BMA declaring it “cannot and will not accept” a contract it says is bad for patients and the NHS and warned it would “consider all options open to us” – a hint of a rolling programme of strikes.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn responded to the decision, saying the move was “provocative and damaging”.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt could act within days to force through a new deal.

Junior doctors in Scotland have welcomed reassurances by Health secretary ShonaRobison that the new contract being imposed on their English counterparts will not apply north of the border.

Currently, junior doctors receive higher pay for night-time and weekend shifts.

The dispute between junior doctors and the government was prompted by the introduction of a new contract. If the Government want more seven-day services then, quite simply, it needs more doctors, nurses and diagnostic staff, and the extra investment needed to deliver it.

“We believe that the real objective of the new contract in not about providing a seven day NHS – which already exists – but about attacking doctors’ terms and conditions to pave the way for further privatisation”.

He added: “An 11% pay increase doesn’t compensate when you take away a 31% average payment for working the unsocial hours”.