NHS bosses pressure ‘deeply muscular’ Hunt to agree to arbitration with junior doctors

According to a source on Twitter, David Cameron and George Osborne have both urged Jeremy Hunt to be “deeply muscular” in his dealings with the junior doctors – putting politics before people’s lives.

Junior doctors already consider Jeremy Hunt to be deeply muscular – or at least, to be representative of a deep muscle. As they explained with a banner behind Andrew Neil on TV:

151120hunt deeply muscular

That’s right – it seems that Mr Hunt has, by his behaviour, self-identified with his rhyming-slang nickname.

151120hunt honoured

Jeremy Hunt has come under growing pressure to let independent arbitrators try to settle the junior doctors dispute before their series of strikes starts next month.

Senior NHS figures and leading members of the medical establishment want the health secretary to drop his insistence that the British Medical Association reopen talks with him before asking the Arbitration, Conciliation and Advisory Service (Acas) to mediate between the two sides.

Simon Stevens, NHS England’s chief executive, Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, its medical director, and chief nursing director, Jane Cummings, are among a host of senior figures who have privately told Hunt that he must do whatever is needed to restart negotiations with the doctors’ union in a bid to prevent the strikes by NHS junior doctors in England planned for 1, 8 and 16 December.

The walkouts, which will disrupt non-urgent NHS services, are set to go ahead after 98% of the 28,305 junior doctors who took part in a BMA ballot backed strike action to further their campaign against a punitive new contract that Hunt is threatening to impose on them. In all, 27,741 doctors backed a strike, and only 564 opposed it.

In the wake of that result, the BMA wants Acas to intervene to try and broker a settlement of the increasingly bitter dispute over trainee doctors’ pay, hours and the planned seven-day NHS.

Hunt has so far refused to agree to them getting involved at this stage. He has insisted that the BMA has to first meet him for talks – something it has refused to do for several months in anger at him reserving his right to impose the revised terms and conditions the union says are unfair and unsafe. It wants him to drop that precondition so that meaningful discussions can start.

Source: NHS bosses pressure Hunt to agree to arbitration with junior doctors | Society | The Guardian

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3 thoughts on “NHS bosses pressure ‘deeply muscular’ Hunt to agree to arbitration with junior doctors

  1. boromoor

    Very unfortunate for Jeremy Corbyn, he may have to change his first name if he doesn’t want to be associated with the phrase “You are a complete Jeremy”.

  2. Dez

    Pretty impresive, positive and conclusive vote well outside any claims of being tainted, unfair not representative etc etc. So that Hunt might not see it but maybe he is being set up. (Can only wish). By pushing the Hunt to be bullish knowing full well that will just upset the natives/public even more his gloating leaders might be considering his removal and be seen as the white knights saving the day……exit muppet stage left. If they continue with their kamikazi politics without any renegotiating that Hunt will still be their fall guy……

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