Evening Standard Comment: Hunt is going to the brink in BMA dispute

WEST END FINAL

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Just before a British Medical Association strike ballot was due, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has turned up the pressure on junior hospital doctors in the long-running dispute over working hours and pay. He has outlined the Government’s new contract in a letter addressed directly to 50,000 junior doctors. In combative style, he accuses the BMA of refusing to negotiate on reforms since June.

In his letter Mr Hunt says the great majority of junior doctors will gain financially from the proposed new settlement. It will, he says, mean an increase of 11 per cent in pay, though future increases will not be automatic but will be linked to progress in training. The BMA disputes the figure. He has also reduced the working hours on Saturday which are paid at a normal rate rather than at more generous, out-of-hours rates. In addition, he wants actually to discourage doctors working more than 56 hours a week, on safety grounds.

The question of working at weekends and nights is crucial here. Mr Hunt is emphatic that the object of his reforms is to ensure that patients do not get worse care outside office hours. The change he wants is not primarily about pay. And to this extent Mr Hunt is right. He is properly exercised by repeated surveys which suggest that patients admitted to hospital at weekends have worse outcomes than those admitted during normal working hours. Illness does not operate on a Monday-Friday basis.

Certainly relations between Mr Hunt and the BMA have soured to a dangerous degree. But in the interests of patients as well as its members, the BMA really should reconsider its strike threat and negotiate with Mr Hunt in good faith. He is right that patients have lost out because of old-style working practices. The BMA should work with the spirit of his reforms, not against them.

The enemy within

Last month the Evening Standard revealed concerns within the Labour Party that some of its best-known London MPs, including David Lammy, Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna, are under threat from a rising number of radical activists in their constituencies. Now it emerges that the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has been addressing rallies of the Momentum group, which some moderate MPs fear will be used to deselect them.

Mr McDonnell, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, claims that he spoke at a recent event in Bethnal Green simply in his role as an MP, rather than in his capacity as shadow chancellor. But that is naïve to say the least. He is a prominent figure on the front bench and his explicit support of a potentially divisive movement within the party is only likely to increase the climate of fear among Labour’s more moderate members. Indeed, there are echoes here of the battle mainstream Labour fought against the militant bloc in the Eighties, when Trotskyists pursued a similar “entryist” policy.

Labour says it is doing all it can to become an electable party of government. Pitting radical campaigners against well-seasoned, temperate MPs such as Creasy or Umunna seems a very odd way to go about it.

Farewell, Brian

The memorial service for Brian Sewell at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, was a fitting tribute to a man who was greatly loved. The service was beautiful, and beauty mattered to Brian. And the eulogies, by Noel Annesley of Christie’s and Sir Max Hastings, our former editor, were funny as well as moving, which was right, because he was a very witty man. Readers admired him because they felt he was on their side. It was good that many were there.

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