Norman Lamb has said that the Junior Doctors’ strike scheduled to take place from 8 am tomorrow should be a wake up call for the Government:
If strikes go ahead tomorrow this should be a wake-up call to the Government that it needs to take a more constructive approach to resolving this dispute. They cannot solve the capacity and funding problems in the NHS by forcing this contract on junior doctors.
Growing demand for services, coupled with a funding settlement which doesn’t keep up, are the fundamental problems facing health and care and yet the Government is refusing to take real action to address this.
What we need is a cross party commission to fundamentally review NHS and care funding, to ensure we can give a fair deal to both patients and NHS staff in years to come.
Forcing through changes to the junior doctors contract is completely the wrong thing for the Government to be focusing on at this critical time in the future of the NHS.