This weekend, thousands of medical students and junior doctors from across the country will be protesting in London; one of a series of protests that have punctuated the past few weeks. The Department of Health, in the guise of Jeremy Hunt, have decided that the best way to improve rock bottom morale in the NHS, rather than to properly fund it and attempt to address the structural problems that the disastrous Health and Social Care Bill have compounded, is to impose a new contract on juniors that nobody wants, has no basis in improving patient care, and must surely be driven entirely by yet more arbitrary cost saving measures which threaten the safety of those who rely on our world-leading service.

One of the most extraordinary things that has permeated the entire debate from the start is how much public, and indeed media, support there is for juniors seeking fairness and clarity. The public get it, even if government don’t. Junior doctors spend far longer than their contracted and paid hours, far beyond even the most dedicated minister, day by day to ensure that their patients get decent care, 24/7. How many times have we, as medical students, watched junior doctor colleagues being forced to miss family weddings, funerals or just a night with the family because the job comes first? It always has, and it always will; medicine is a career of public service, and when we enter medical school with the words ‘I want to help people’, we really mean it. When the government say that they want to help patients and doctors, and then spread misinformation about juniors, GPs and consultants, using misleading statistics about weekend death rates and seven-day services, then perhaps we might be forgiven in not quite believing them.

Because there has been rather a lot of misinformation thrown about during this campaign. Firstly, those seeking to impose the contract and further demotivate junior doctors have worked very hard to smear those doctors working on the front line day by day. Juniors are any doctors not at consultant level – doctors whose starting salary is considerably lower than most graduate jobs, at around £20k. Increments above that are paid for unsocial hours – which the government is now attempting to slash. According to them, 10pm on a Saturday is a perfectly social hour to work, for less pay. This from a group of people who are increasing the salaries of MPs while ensuring they gold-plate their own unsocial hours provision. It would be a sick joke if it weren’t so unfair.

Add to that the pernicious nonsense about seven-day services. Firstly, this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with junior doctors – but it is worth addressing here because of the deliberate conflation that government have attempted in the past few weeks. There are not days of the week that juniors do not work – that is simply not true. But nor are there weekends that are consultant-free. What consultants do not always offer at weekends is elective work – that is, non-emergency services. If Jeremy Hunt would like to see more consultants in at weekends, then firstly he needs to recruit more to fill the weekday elective spots, and he needs to ensure that all the other services that we need to diagnose are there too. There is absolutely no commitment to that whatsoever; it is all words and doctor-bashing. 

And it is despicable and dangerous misrepresentation of weekend death figures that is being used to justify this. It is certainly true that, according to several studies, coming into hospital at a weekend carries a higher risk of death than during the week. But to link that to staffing at weekend, which the government doesn’t seem to even understand in the first place, is disgracefully poor use of statistics that even fresher medical students can understand. Completely ignoring confounding factors is not evidence-based medicine – it is political spin at its worst. Patients are believing this false causation and not coming into hospital at weekends – and it is making them sicker, or at worse, killing them. This cannot be allowed to continue.

But then those devising these contracts aren’t interested in the facts. The contracts will also increase the gender pay gap by punishing women who take maternity leave, but the government has deliberately and willfully ignored this. The BMA has asked for several assurances before re-entering negotiations on these contracts, and they are being completely ignored by George Osborne, who talks in general concepts and riddles but never in plain English.

The root problem with these new contracts is that they threaten patient safety. The government wants to remove the financial punishment that employers get for overworking their staff and overusing antisocial hours (which will no longer even be classed as such). This will result in an even more exhausted workforce. As the spectre of leaving the EU looms overhead, it might well be farewell to the European Working Time directive, too. The reason that the pay changes are unfair is very simple – they create a system that disadvantages patients.

Until the government seriously returns to negotiations, the possibility of industrial action by juniors, supported by students, very much remains. This is almost unprecedented and as the society of the future, students here have the moral duty to support their medical student colleagues. Because in doing so, they are supporting future patients and the health of the nation. We are told doctors should never strike – that it is immoral. Patient safety will never be put at risk by doctors – the only people putting it at risk are the government riding roughshod over the concerns of those who are experts in making people better again. Please support us, and tell this government that enough is enough.