Jeremy Hunt forced to backtrack in row over NHS doctors’ contract
Jeremy Hunt has been forced into a partial climbdown in his dispute with NHS junior doctors in an attempt to stop their fury at a threatened punitive new contract spilling over into strike action.
The health secretary moved to defuse widespread anger at his threat to impose new terms and conditions on them by offering two major concessions and assurances that they will not see their pay cut or working hours extended.
Faced with Englands 53,000 junior doctors being balloted for industrial action, and amid growing unease at his handling of the row, Hunt has indicated that he is willing to rethink his plan to reclassify working on Saturday between 7am and 10pm as part of a junior doctors normal working week for which they would be paid at only the standard rate.
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In a detailed and emollient letter to Dr Johann Malawana, the chair of the British Medical Associations junior doctors committee, Hunt also sought to banish widely held fears that junior doctors whose vital contribution to the NHS he lauded would soon have to start working the 90-hour weeks that their predecessors did.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/08/jeremy-hunt-nhs-doctors-contract-pay-strike