Scandalously under-reported, unsurprisingly, however the judgement will be passed down next Wednesday. I don’t believe it will the anything ground shaking, in fact I suspect it will be a bit of damp squib obscured with legalese and probably changing nothing, but it would have been nice to have seen him squirm a little.

The grounds for the case are on the Justiceforhealth website, but the real humdingers are that Hunt acted “in breach of the requirements of transparency, certainty and clarity” and “The Secretary of State has acted irrationally” 😆

If it wasn’t for Dr Rant on Facebook, I wouldn’t have known about it.

Ridiculous waste of time

Unusually fair assessment of your posts Jamby

Ridiculous waste of time

I take it you’ve been observing all of the court proceedings?

I’d prefer to see JH caught by the testicles.

A Health secretary with such a poor understanding of and history of misusing scientific data is indeed a crime

Ridiculous waste of time

I think it’s understating the case somewhat to call him a waste of space – Hunt is positively, dangerously toxic for the department he runs.

If it wasn’t for Dr Rant on Facebook, I wouldn’t have known about it.

Indeed.

Interesting, a few strikes could have been avoided if JH hadn’t deliberately mislead re: his powers to ‘impose’ a contract…

Justice for Health was set up by NHS staff and powered by your crowdfunding to contest the legalities of contract imposition.

It is now established, beyond doubt, that the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, is not imposing the disputed contract on junior doctors and that employers of junior doctors are not legally compelled to use it.

Throughout the year we have seen the SoS repeatedly declare imposition of the new contract on junior doctors. Through the process of litigation in the High Court we finally have clarity on his decision-making and legal powers.

? Mr Hunt is not imposing
? He never was
? He never meant to suggest he was
? He claims no-one ever thought he was

It’s interesting to compare and contrast the judge’s ruling to what’s being reported.

Government win. Obvious really.

Hunt may not be technically imposing it but it will be a really really bad career move for any Trust CEO not to use it to employ doctors.

Well, it’s a small step at least, he was forced to retract and clarify statements, essentially during the proceedings, in order to avoid appearing to have lost the case (I’m mixing up all sorts of legalese here I’m sure).

BBC report

Utterly pathetic from the BBC there, I’m sadly not surprised to see… 🙁

Hunt may not be technically imposing it but it will be a really really bad career move for any Trust CEO not to use it to employ doctors.

Granted, but I think the fact that he has been pretending, up till now, that he could and would impose the contract has had a significant bearing on how the argument has progressed. Would people have gone on strike if they had known he technically couldn’t impose it and there was still room for negotiation? Would so much bad press have been drummed up?

It’s just another example of the dishonesty and obfuscation employed by Hunt during the whole sorry saga.

Hunt may not be technically imposing it but it will be a really really bad career move for any Trust CEO not to use it to employ doctors.

I wouldn’t have thought it will be this black and white.

I am almost certain that there will be some punitive financial penalty put in place so that if hospitals don’t switch, they wont receive funding etc.

So the government have already blamed the doctors, now they will blame the Trusts 😀

Lunch with some jr docs as the news came thru about them loosing the case

pleased that Hunt had been forced to backtrack on his claims
but 1 still pissed off enough that he’d already cancelled his BMA membership because theyve backed down over the strikes
and said he and his doctor wife would be following several of his colleagues and were applying to hospitals in Australia to start once he finishes hes PhD next year, hes a hot shot surgical fellow too.

definitely not a win for he government, the NHS or the country

Utterly pathetic from the BBC there

Yes, damn them for an accurate report of a court judgement!

Yes, damn them for an accurate report of a court judgement!

Accurate by significant omission, yes, and then only if you ignore the fact that the BBC has misrepresented JusticeforHealth’s case* and in fact the judge’s actual conclusion** (unless it’s just a very badly written article…).

What’s more it fails to report the farcical nature in which the Department of Health pretended that at no point was JH threatening to impose the contract, and that is was everybody else’s fault for misinterpreting phrases such as ‘I will impose the contract’ as such. Any halfway decent, unbiased media outlet might have pointed this out.

*Justiceforhealth were not presenting the argument that the contract was ‘unsafe and unsustainable’ as reported by the BBC

**The judge did not ‘approve the contract’