“We therefore welcome the guarantee that junior doctors will not work more than 48 hours a week”.
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Chris Hopson, its chief executive, said: “There is no alternative – negotiation and discussion between staff and employers is the only way to devise a new contract that’s safe for patients and fair for doctors”.
The government has indicated it will impose the new contract next year in England, prompting the BMA to ask its 53,000 junior doctor members about industrial action – a move which led to last week’s meeting between the two sides.
He said: “No junior doctor working full-time will be expected to work on average more than 48 hours a week”.
“I can give an absolute guarantee to junior doctors that this contract will not impose longer hours”, he wrote.
Dr Maureen Baker, chairman of the Royal College of Global Positioning System said: “We welcome this statement by the Health Secretary to clarify the situation on the junior doctors’ contract and hope that it will help to unblock the current impasse”.
Critics have calculated the changes could mean as much as a 40% pay cut for a few junior doctors, leading the British Medical Association (BMA) to moot strike action.
It will remove vital protections on safe working patterns, devalue evening and weekend work, and could have an impact on the quality of patient care if we return to the days of over-exhausted junior doctors working dangerously long hours.
“I can give you a categorical assurance that I am not seeking to save any money from the junior doctors’ paybill”.
He said: “Whilst I want to see an end to automatic annual increments (with pay rises instead based on moving through the stages of training and taking on more responsibility), these changes would be cost neutral, rather than cost saving”.
“This will mean that junior doctors would still benefit from four or five progression pay rises as they move through training”, he added.
But the letter seen by the BBC says Mr Hunt would be “pleased to discuss” a compromise on the definition of normal hours on a Saturday.
The BMA is already under pressure from a few juniors to seek to have all of Saturday counted as an antisocial shift which attracts overtime, and potentially weekday evenings too.
In the letter Mr Hunt admitted that to support a seven-day NHS Junior Doctors would have an increase in “plain-time working”, but it would be backed up by an increase in basic pay.
The Health Secretary has promised to review a controversial new contract for junior doctors in a bid to stop them going on strike.
And a “flexible pay premia” would be used to support recruitment into specialities with dire shortages such as A&E medicine and general practice.
A spokeswoman for the BMA said: “It is encouraging that the health secretary has finally recognised the vital role that junior doctors play as tomorrow’s leaders across the NHS”.
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Dr Malawana welcomed the letter, but said the BMA was “urgently seeking clarification” on a few of the matters Mr Hunt raised.
