Hunt’s quack remedy

“The NHS is struggling to cope with five day working,” says Dr Ron Singer, chair of Doctors in Unite. “How does Jeremy Hunt think it can cope with seven day a week working?”

And, of course, the seven day working spin and improving the NHS claims are the great red herrings in the junior doctors’ dispute.

Hunt is determined to rip up junior doctors contracts and impose worse pay and unsafe hours but does not want to be straightforward and say that.

Instead, Hunt is shrouding his attack under claims he wants to make the NHS better. The problem is its beginning to buckle under record budget deficits, as five years of austerity funding hits the walls of growing demand and drug price inflation.

Hunt’s quack remedy – a seven day NHS – does not have the money to make it work. And with a shortage of doctors to even run a ‘five day’ NHS, there is not the medical staff to underpin it.

Hunt is increasingly looking like another here today gone tomorrow politician selling snake oil and getting caught.

‘Seven day working’ – an increase of 40 per cent – is unrealistic says Ron Singer. “He does not have enough doctors or enough of any other parts of the NHS team to deliver seven day working outside of A&E. It can’t be done at nil cost as Hunt claims, so it’s a non-runner from the start.”

Four key NHS targets – and some of those already watered down – were missed in September, a signal of how much pressure the NHS is under. Targets were missed for A&E admissions, cancer referrals, ambulance response times and the NHS 111 call service.

Pressures

And NHS foundation trusts are also facing huge financial pressures, running up ÂŁ1.6bn in budget deficits in the first six months of this financial year alone. The missed targets and huge deficits heavily underscore Singer’s point about a full on seven day NHS being unrealistic.

Hunt is also looking increasingly slippery in other areas. Talks with the junior doctors broke down after the NHS employers said they had no authority to negotiate on a whole list of contract changes demanded by Hunt.

In a long list of over 20 items, they told the British Medical Association that only one item could be negotiated. And the entire package had to be done without an increase in the overall pay bill.

With NHS employers basically saying they were the wrong people to negotiate with, the BMA rightly worked out that no real negotiations could take place. This remains the same, with Hunt demanding talks but only on the basis of no negotiation and no increase in the costs of the contract package.

Hunt is derailing the talks train before it has even left the station. There is little wonder he won’t go to ACAS to try and break the deadlock, because the deadlock is him.

“This is about bullying junior doctors into a worse contract with seven day working as a smokescreen for the public,” says Ron Singer. “The safeguards in place to monitor junior doctors hours are to be relaxed.

Unsocial hours

“These safeguards and the overtime rates for doctors help control junior doctors’ hours. If you tone down the safeguards and make doctors cheaper you open the floodgates to longer hours and more unsocial hours.

“In the medical profession we know that tired brains make poor decisions. And that is why the new contracts are unsafe for patients.

“If Hunt succeeds in that, then he will use that as a precedent for attacking other NHS workers. That’s where the bullying tactics come in, with him now using scare tactics as well.

“He is spoiling for a fight on this, one reason the government wants to dodge ACAS if it can. The government has already starting whipping up attacks on doctors and those will get worse.”

Hunt is likely to drag his feet over ACAS and offer talks but only with silly preconditions designed to make sure they don’t happen. And then blame the junior doctors for not accepting his offers.

But are junior doctors and the BMA ready for everything the government propaganda machine is going to throw at them when strike action starts? Ron Singer understands there will be an onslaught as part of Hunt’s ‘will he/wont he’ brinkmanship over further talks and if strike action were to go ahead.

“The junior doctors will face a greater onslaught than they have already. They’ve faced the insults of being told by Hunt that they don’t understand what’s on offer.

“Junior doctors and medical students have passed plenty of difficult exams to get where they are. They have no problem working out for themselves what is on offer and what they see makes them very angry.

“It is because they understand that they delivered an overwhelmingly vote in favour of strike action.

“The government’s ham-fisted interventions and insults have politicised junior doctors and medical students which future governments may live to regret.”