‘Wholehearted support’

A strong majority of England’s 45,000 junior doctors went on a second 24-hour strike today (February 10) over a contentious contract that health secretary Jeremy Hunt has threatened to impose on them.

 
It is estimated that nearly 3,000 non-urgent operations have been cancelled today after last-ditch talks between the British Medical Association, NHS Employers and the Department of Health broke down over the issues of pay and unsocial hours.

 
BMA junior doctors committee chair Johann Malawana noted that ‘it was frustrating that the Government is still digging in its heels.’

 
“The Government’s entrenched position in refusing to recognise Saturday working as unsocial hours, together with its continued threat to impose a contract so fiercely resisted by junior doctors across England, leaves us with no alternative but to continue with industrial action,” he said.

 
Commenting in advance of today’s strike action, Unite, which embraces Doctors in Unite (DiU), said that the health secretary has been ‘as slippery as an eel’ in his dealings with the junior doctors.

 
“Jeremy Hunt has made evasiveness into an art form with his twisting-and-turning,” said Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe. “He has failed to negotiate in good faith to resolve the junior doctors’ dispute.”

 
“He has always been keen to blame everyone else except himself for the pressures on the 1.3 million NHS workforce in England and the accompanying financial crisis facing the health service,” he added.

 
“He became health secretary in September 2012 and the NHS under his watch is buckling under the pressure. For example, the waiting times for being seen at A&E within four hours are getting worse.

 
“The junior doctors are the latest part of the NHS workforce to suffer from his disingenuousness – he has proved to be as slippery as an eel,” Jarrett-Thorpe noted. “But he now needs to step up and settle this junior doctors’ dispute – the public demands no less.”

 
Dr Jackie Applebee, DiU’s rep on BMA GPs’ committee said, “We wholeheartedly support the junior doctors. They are quite right to oppose a contract which would make them work more for less pay.
“Their dispute is symptomatic of the financial crisis in the NHS,” she added. “The government wants to make NHS staff pay for the underfunding of the NHS.”

 
Dr David Wrigley, a Lancashire GP and chair of the DiU branch noted, “It’s not just junior doctors who know how difficult things are in the NHS. GPs are in crisis, too, as they see their patients’ funding reduced year on year.”

 
“At the same time, the NHS is rightly moving more patient care out of hospitals and closer to our patients’ own homes but this places additional pressures on general practice when no resources are transferred at the same time,” he went on to say.

 
“GPs and community nurses, as well as local social services, need more resources to help their patients rather than continuing with more Tory cuts.”

Doctors in Unite were on picket lines today supporting junior doctors who find themselves in the front line of defending the health service and delivering patient care. The government must address this crisis in the NHS by correcting the serious underfunding in the NHS.