Junior doctors' contracts: Government 'pauses' imposition of new terms for strike negotiations

The Government will pause the imposition of the disputed junior doctor contract for five days to allow talks to resume, a health minister has said.

In a potentially significant breakthrough in the long-running dispute, all work to implement the new contracts, which will require more weekend working, will be suspended.

In exchange the British Medical Association (BMA) has been asked to delay any decision about further industrial action.

The proposal was initially made by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. The BMA accepted it, and while the Government had initially said it was “too late” to stop the implementation of the contracts, health minister Lord Prior told the House of Lords that Mr Hunt would now be writing to the Academy expressing the Government’s willingness to cooperate, if the BMA agreed to “focus the discussion” on the issues of unsocial hours and Saturday pay.

The BMA is yet to respond to the detail of the Government’s terms.

Lord Prior told the House of Lords: “We are willing to pause introduction of the new contract for five days from Monday should the junior doctors committee agree to focus the discussion on the outstanding contractual issues, namely unsocial hours and Saturday pay.”

Striking a conciliatory tone, Lord Prior said there was now a recognition in Government that the dispute had become about more than just the terms of the junior doctor contract.

“It is about how junior doctors are trained, how they are valued, how they are integrated into hospitals and into the workforce,” he said.

“These are much broader issues than those addressed in the contract. The Government is fully aware of that and once this dispute has been settled we can start to resolve those bigger, deeper, more fundamental issues.”

The new working conditions were due to be imposed from August, without the approval of the workforce, after the Government unilaterally decided to end negotiations with the BMA, claiming that the union’s unwillingness to engage on key points – in particular Saturday pay – had made a negotiated settlement impossible.

More industrial action from junior doctors followed, including the first all-out junior doctors’ strike in the history of the NHS, which, despite Government warnings, concluded without any reports of major patient safety incidents.