2015 junior doctors contract dispute in England

A negotiation between NHS Employers and the main UK doctor's union, the British Medical Association (BMA), had been overshadowed by the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, threatening to impose certain aspects.

These talks ran into serious problems when the BMA rejected the proposals from the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, who wanted the contracts to reflect commitments made in the Conservative 2015 election manifesto upon junior doctors in England.

[1] In September 2015, Hunt proposed new contracts for junior doctors which would scrap overtime rates for work between 7am and 10pm on every day except Sunday while increasing their basic pay.

[10][11][12] He said that working these long hours was unsafe, claiming that existing pay arrangements were known colloquially in the NHS as "danger money", although a Facebook survey carried out by one doctor showed that 99.7% of 1,200 respondents had never heard of the term.

We have repeatedly asked for such detail in writing from the Secretary of State, but find, instead, that this has been released to media without sharing it with junior doctors' representatives"[17] and "The proposals on pay, not for the first time, appear to be misleading.

[20] After five days of talks between the government and BMA, conciliation service Acas confirmed that agreement had been reached to suspend the strike action that had been planned for December.

[27][28][29] On 24 December 2015, Johann Malawana gave a 4 January deadline for the talks to result an acceptable outcome, or industrial action would be announced.

[31][32] On 8 January, it was revealed that a supposedly independent response to the initial strike plans from Sir Bruce Keogh, Medical Director of NHS England, had been strengthened by Department of Health officials and approved by Hunt.

[37][38] There were claims that Bruce Keogh, had used performance target levels to justify and encourage NHS trusts to declare an emergency situation, forcing Junior Doctors to work despite the strike, a move which the BMA condemned.