DOCTORS from local hospital trusts met the public in Farnham’s Lion and Lamb Yard last Thursday in a further attempt to rouse support against the Government’s proposal to impose a new junior doctors’ contract.

The event, part of the national ‘Meet the Doctors’ campaign, was organised by Dr Elizabeth Potter, a junior doctor at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford. It was deliberately scheduled to coincide with the British Medical Association’s second 48-hour industrial strike action beginning at 8am on Wednesday, April 6.

From the outset, junior doctors have opposed the imposition of the new contract and have gained much public support, which Dr Potter says was evident from the number of people attending the event in Farnham.

“There is an unprecedented strength of feeling regarding the Government’s actions over the junior doctor contract which has propelled doctors to take action and speak to the public directly about their very real and justified concerns,” she told The Herald.

“We have had lots of people coming to support and a lot of people wanting to sign signatures to their MPs.”

More than 50,000 people across the country have signed the petition to oppose the new contract. It is hoped the Meet the Doctors events will facilitate further signatures of MPs’ own constituents.

Dr Potter added: “If enough people are signing to lobby this, MPs will actually go back and discuss this and engage with the profession again. We’re really hopeful they will return to negotiations and just improve on what we’ve got so far.”

Up until now, according to Dr Potter “the presidents of the Royal Colleges, physicians, surgeons and all of the Royal Medical Colleges have stated they don’t want this contract to be imposed and they want the government to return to negotiations, we just hope they will.”

However, despite this level of support Health Secretary and MP for South West Surrey, Jeremy Hunt told The Herald he has no intention to revisit the proposals as he believes they were already “90 per cent agreed with the BMA”.

Mr Hunt also criticised the BMA for escalating the dispute with the first full walkout, including emergency care, in the history of the NHS by junior doctors from 8am to 5pm on April 26 to 27.

He said: “I’m disappointed that the BMA is escalating strikes that will put patients at risk – action that the NHS medical director, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, and former Labour health minister Lord Darzi have expressed significant concerns about.

“The new contract includes a 13.5 per cent average increase in basic pay alongside stronger safeguards to improve patient safety and a reduction in the number of hours worked in any one week from 91 to 72.

“We have been talking to the BMA for over three years, in more than 75 separate meetings. During that period they walked out twice and now only one issue remains – Saturday pay.

“If the doctors’ union had agreed to negotiate on that as they promised to do through ACAS in November, we’d have a negotiated agreement by now. Instead, we had no choice but to proceed with proposals recommended and supported by NHS leaders - which were 90 per cent agreed with the BMA.”

Dr Louise Irvine, a GP and BMA council representative who also attended last week’s Meet the Doctors event in Farnham and stood against Mr Hunt at the last general election, disagrees with his comments.

She feels that rather than making doctors’ working hours shorter the contract “will make their hours longer and harder, more antisocial and more exhausting” and adds that from the public’s point of view “they do not want tired doctors because it’s scary.”

But it’s not just longer hours that concern Dr Irvine. New worries have been raised following the government’s equality assessment published two weeks ago that suggests the contract will ‘impact disproportionately on women’.

Changes in pay in relation to length of service will mean that women who take time off to start a family will resume work on their old salary. Up until now female doctors salaries have kept pace with men’s because small annual pay awards prevent part-time doctors, of whom the vast majority are women, earning less than their full time colleagues over time. The new contract strips these away widening gender pay gap.

The next Meet the Doctors event will take place in Farnham ahead of the next phase of industrial action, on Saturday, April 16.