“The National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion”, wrote the former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson in his memoirs. He was making the point that our NHS is seen as a sacred institution, and, as with a hallowed book, any change to it is viewed as sacrilegious. As such, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s radical changes to junior doctors’ contracts was always going to be deeply contentious. The debate has been framed by the opposing groups both in the terms of the NHS’s demise and resurrection. Little else in Britain could cause as big a stir. As the battle rages on, we must side with the junior doctors. Hunt’s proposed treatment will do more harm than good, remedying little and damaging much of what is best about the NHS: its high quality of care, its rich resources of young, enthusiastic trainees, and the good will and diligent care of its staff.

Driven by manifesto promises of a ‘7 day NHS’ and a promise to rectify higher death rates at weekends, Hunt is proposing a new contract for junior doctors in England which seeks to remedy these problems. Their basic pay will be increased, but other parts of the pay package are to be restricted. Most controversially, what constitutes ‘unsocial hours’ will be changed. The normal working week will be redefined as between 7am and 10pm every day, except Sunday. Previously junior doctors’ earned extra for working between 7pm and 7am Monday to Friday, as well as for working weekends. Now this extra pay will be slashed, and they will be expected to work these deeply undesirable hours for no more reward. Since mid-2014, a wrangle between health executives and doctors has been ongoing. Little ground has been made, and in November 2015 98 per cent of junior doctors voted to go on strike. This was eventually called off in the hope that a reasonable compromise could be reached. When no such deal was forthcoming, and Hunt threatened to impose the contract anyway, a new strike on the 10th February this year saw junior doctors walk out en masse.

Their reasons were entirely fair. Junior doctors - who total 55,000 in England, and make up a third of the medical workforce - are already overworked, and are doing an extremely demanding job where a mistake can cost the ultimate price. Arguments against their strike based on doctors being overpaid are unfounded. After five years of medical school, many junior doctors leave university with over £70,000 worth of debt and start at an entry level wage of just below £23,000 a year (lower than the average for lawyers, engineers or accountants). Refusing to pay them extra for unsociable hours means that, for many, a small pay increase will do nothing to stop a fall in wages resulting from a loss of overtime money. Furthermore, Hunt’s dream of a ‘7 day NHS’ is already a reality: there already is round the clock emergency care seven days a week in Britain. A clear indictment of the policy has even emerged from his own colleagues, when a leaked report from the Health Department said that it “cannot evidence” a link between increased consultant presence and lower death rates.

If no guarantees can be made, all the new proposals will do, in Shadow Health Secretary Heidi Alexander’s words, is “destroy morale which is already at rock bottom”. Care would suffer and patients would be at risk. A recent poll in The Independent showed that 90 percent of junior doctors were prepared to quit the NHS if the contracts were forced through, with many suggesting they would leave for the City or medical jobs abroad. Our NHS cannot cope with such an exodus. Junior doctors can hardly be accused of being selfish in their demands for a fair system that ensures the safe care of patients. Jeremy Hunt’s demands are unreasonable, unfounded and will have disastrous consequences for the state of healthcare in Britain.

There are, however, deeper issues at stake here. Dr Lauren Gavaghan gave a powerful speech on LBC Radio in which she suggested this was not just about junior doctors but “about a much wider political picture”, and raised concerns about a link between the new contracts and the socio-political aims of the current government. Suggestions have been made that extending care to weekends will encourage private firms to take over these services as they are easier to run, and are therefore more profitable. Hunt has said he will "negotiate about anything” except increasing overall spending. An increase in private money in the NHS and a refusal to increase budgets are all justified under the convenient policy of austerity. But to what extent is austerity just a disguise for the agenda of shrinking the state? The path that the government has taken on the NHS and junior doctors’ contracts demonstrates their continued dislike of the organisation and its values of equal, state planned care that puts patients over profits. The NHS has served us all well, and we should support junior doctors in their battle to ensure that it always will do.