The College is deeply concerned that the Government has announced that it will introduce a new contract for trainees in England in August 2016. Although the College is not a Trade Union and cannot get involved in contract negotiations, we can highlight the implications of the new contract for recruitment, training and well-being of trainees as all of these influence the quality of pathology services for patients.

As President, I have co-signed a letter to the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to express our serious reservations and to encourage further negotiations. Any new contract must be fair to the full range of pathology specialties, irrespective of their working patterns. While trainees whose jobs do not currently attract any banding may see their basic pay rise, those with out of hours commitments are likely to face a pay cut. Standard hours would be extended to 10pm and include Saturdays, a move that reflects proposed changes to the consultant contract. Annual increments would be replaced by less frequent pay increases linked to increasing responsibility, meaning that those taking time out of training for research, to gain experience in another specialty or for parental leave would be disadvantaged. On the new contract trainees would be paid only for the hours in their job plan even if they regularly had to work additional hours.

The College supports a contract that remunerates trainees for hours worked (not just scheduled hours), that recognises anti-social hours and the impact this has on doctors’ lives, that rewards additional experience, including research, and that does not discriminate against doctors who take parental leave or train flexibly.

The governments in Scotland and Wales have announced that they will not introduce the new contract, so these changes currently apply to trainees in England only.

The next steps taken will depend on the response of the Secretary of State to the letter setting out our concerns.

We will keep you posted on any further developments. If you have specific examples of how the new contract would disadvantage you, please let me know.

Suzy Lishman
President
[email protected]

In a previous letter Jeremy Hunt sets out why he beliieves the current Junior Doctors' contract has 'served its purpose and needed reform'.