Crispin Blunt

Conservative Party | Reigate

Junior doctors face career crisis in latest example of NHS mismanagement. Crispin Blunt meets with local healthcare professionals

Crispin Blunt MP today met with local junior doctors at East Surrey Hospital in Redhill to hear at first hand the difficulties they are facing in the current crisis in the NHS. He joined junior doctors to listen to Dr Andrew O’Brien, Chairman of the Thames Region of the BMA’s junior doctor committee make a presentation about the career crisis they face. Dr O’Brien explained that the Government having catastrophically mismanaged doctors’ and nurses’ pay and failing to link these with productivity were now desperately seeking to claw back resources by a fundamental reorganisation of doctors’ careers. He warned that the practical consequences of this would be visited on junior doctors and patients next year. Thousands of junior doctors faced arbitrary decisions that would limit their career prospects, with many not finding jobs at all. Incredibly the rushed introduction of this system would mean on current plans there will be no doctors on duty below consultant grade in every hospital in the country between 1st and 3rd August 2007 whilst they all attend induction courses.

This follows a week in which Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Secretary of State for health pledged that under a Conservative Government the NHS would be free from Government interference The Conservative leader David Cameron gave a keynote speech on Monday 9th October in which he called for and end to party political involvement in the NHS:  "We will end political meddling over money - removing the scope for fiddling by distributing resources for reasons of political expediency rather than clinical need.”

Earlier this week Crispin Blunt spoke in the House of Commons during a debate on health and called on the Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt, to account for the disastrous political interventions of her and her predecessor Alan Milburn in the proposed restructuring of hospital care for all Reigate constituents. 

Referring to the decision to place a hospital at St Helier, rather than Sutton, in order to bring a political benefit to the Labour MP for Mitcham and Modern, Siobhain McDonagh, Crispin Blunt said:

“The local authorities were so appalled by Patricia Hewitt’s party political intervention that they were seeking a judicial review to overturn a decision that was manifestly unreasonable. They had succeeded in winning a date for a court battle but when faced with this Patricia Hewitt reversed her decision.”

In the House of Commons he went on to challenge the Labour MP Laura Moffat who campaigned against the restructuring of healthcare in Crawley and East Surrey despite the fact that all the local professional advice was in favour of the changes. Crispin Blunt concluded his remarks by calling on the government to hasten the day we can “take the corruption of party politics out of the provision of health care in this country.”

Speaking outside East Surrey Hospital this afternoon Crispin Blunt said:

“It is clear from the BMA presentation junior doctors and I heard this afternoon that we are about to witness another NHS management disaster unless the Government can be persuaded to think again.”

Link to Crispin Blunt’s speech in the House of Commons.