Contracts and conditions in the NHS

An e-petition which called for Parliament “To debate a vote of no confidence in Health Secretary the Right Hon Jeremy Hunt” was started on Monday 20 July, the day on which petition.parliament.uk was opened. It reached 100,000 signatures on Tuesday 21 July and now has more than 220,000 signatures.

The Government provided a response to the petition, which is included in the pack.

Once a petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the Petitions Committee is able to consider it for debate. In response to this petition, the Petitions Committee decided to schedule a debate in Westminster Hall on the motion “That this House has considered the e-petition relating to contracts and conditions in the NHS”.

The Chair of the Petitions Committee, Helen Jones MP, will lead the debate.

This is the first debate to be scheduled by the new Petitions Committee. The Committee considers e-petitions on petition.parliament.uk (a new e-petitions portal, jointly owned by the House and the Government) as well as public petitions presented by Members.

For this debate, the online community @WeNurses (which has worked with Parliament in the past, including with the Health Committee) has offered to facilitate an online discussion about contracts and conditions in the NHS on the afternoon of Friday 11 September from 2pm to 3pm.

All Members are very welcome to take part in this discussion, which will take place on the hashtag #wenurses.

Staff from the Digital Outreach team and the staff of the Petitions Committee will be on hand to answer any procedural questions that arise during the discussion. After the discussion, staff will compile and summarise the comments made so that Members can, if they wish, draw on them during the debate.