Patients will suffer most

Jeremy Hunt’s announcement today (February 11) that he intends to impose new contracts on junior doctors is the ‘nuclear option’ that will do nothing to improve patient safety.

Unite said that the health secretary’s unilateral imposition of the contract was ‘high-handed’ and will lead to a mass exodus of junior doctors either to jobs abroad or to alternative employment, such as in academia.

Unite, which embraces Doctors in Unite (DiU), said it was looking into the legal consequences of imposition and will assist junior doctors in the weeks and months to come as their employment circumstances change.

“We are very concerned that imposition of a national contract on 45,000 employees is disproportionate and will lead to further demoralisation which could be irreparable for a generation,” said Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe.

“Many junior doctors are already looking at jobs abroad or at alternative jobs in academia or the private sector.

“The losers are certainly the doctors, but more importantly, patients,” he added. “Doctors and other NHS staff repeatedly ‘go the extra mile’ for patients by working well beyond their contracted hours of work. This could become a thing of the past due to the high-handed way they have been treated.

Not the ‘enemy within’

“Jeremy Hunt has adopted a very macho posture and thinks he is re-running the Tory onslaught against the miners in the 1980s – junior doctors are not ‘the enemy within’ and the secretary of state should not use this portrayal,” he went on to say.

“However, this won’t wash as the vast majority of the public are behind the junior doctors as they know the wonderful care they give in the over-stretched NHS.

Jarrett-Thorpe pointed out that junior doctors are already working seven days a week.

“The fundamental issue here is that Hunt won’t provide sufficient new funding to ensure a properly resourced seven days-a-week service,” he said.

“He is trying to do this on the cheap at the expense of patient safety, and the terms and conditions of the junior doctors.

“Unite calls on Hunt to seriously rethink the imposition and get back around the table with the British Medical Association (BMA). In the meantime, we will offer all the support of the union to the junior doctors, since an attack on them is an attack on all NHS workers.

“Imposition of this contract has been branded by many HR directors as ‘the nuclear option’. Improving the service to patients is the last thing it will achieve.”