*** CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ***

Heidi Alexander MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon about imposition of a new junior doctors’ contract, said:

Mr Speaker, just when you thought this whole sorry saga couldn’t get any worse, it now appears that Government policy is in complete disarray.

Despite giving us all the impression back in February that he was going to railroad through a new contract, it now seems the Health Secretary is simply just making a suggestion – or, as his lawyers would say, “approving the terms of a model contract”.

Last night, the Health Secretary took to Twitter to claim this wasn’t a change of approach 

So, on behalf of patients, I have to ask him what on earth is going on?

We need a very clear answer to a straightforward question - is he imposing a new contract? Yes or no?

If he’s not, but merely suggesting a template, why did he not make this clearer beforehand?

And why, in his oral statement of the 11 February, did he lead Parliament, the media, the public and crucially 50,000 junior doctors to believe he was announcing imposition?

The Junior Doctors Committee took the unprecedented step of escalating their industrial action on the back of his decision to force through a new contract.

How can the Health Secretary possibly justify a situation whereby his rhetoric, underpinned by nothing but misplaced bravado and bullishness, could lead to the first ever all-out strike of junior doctors in the history of the NHS? 

Mr Speaker, we also need answers to these further questions:

Do all NHS employers have free rein to amend the terms of the Health Secretary’s so-called “model contract”?

Does this include non-foundation trusts?

Is it legal for Health Education England to effectively blackmail trusts on the part of the Health Secretary, by withholding funding if that is what Government policy now is?

Finally, Mr Speaker, it seems to me that there are two basic scenarios here.

Either the Health Secretary has known all along that he doesn’t have the power to impose a new contract and so all of this is part of a cynical attempt to take on a trade union.

Or, he was oblivious to the fact he didn’t have the power to do this, in which case what is going on in his Department?

Mr Speaker, this is no way to run the NHS.

Today’s revelations call into question the motives, judgement and competence of this Health Secretary and this House, doctors and patients deserve some answers.