Dear Editor,

I write in connection with the NHS Junior Doctors’ new contract, which the government now plans to impose, without any further negotiation, as I write.

The government appears to be intent on imposing a 20% - 40% cut in Junior Doctors’ pay, with worse conditions. My daughter is a Junior Doctor. She has been working her socks off since she was 14 to get GCSEs, A Levels, a six year Medical Degree and is now in the middle of a seven year training course to become an anaesthetist.

She tells me that if the proposed changes go through, she will not be able to afford to continue her training and neither will many of her colleagues.

The government have made a series of misleading and downright false claims in connection with this issue recently. They have said that most consultants do not work at weekends – in fact only three in a thousand do not.

They have said that Junior Doctors can opt out of working at weekends – they can’t. At the heart of these falsehoods is the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

A glance at his Wikipedia entry would erode anyone’s confidence in this character. For a start, in 2009, he was forced to pay back £11,554 in over claimed expenses.

He has co-authored a book in which he called for the NHS to be privatised. In short, no one in their right mind would put this man in charge of a whelk stall, yet he is in charge of our National Health Service.

I urge your readers to write to the local MP, Jesse Norman. Email [email protected], and urge that our Junior Doctors are not treated in this abominable way.

I add finally that my daughter has saved lives, I doubt that Jeremy Hunt has.

Chris Bartrum (Cllr)

Ross-on-Wye