A PETITION to remove Tory Health Secretary Hunt from his post is already heading towards the 100,000 mark.
Some 80,000 people have signed a petition calling for a vote of no confidence in health secretary Jeremy Hunt, less than 24 hours after being launched.
A separate petition launched via Change.org on Sunday calling on Hunt to resign, or Prime Minister David Cameron to remove him from his post, had received almost 90,000 signatures by Tuesday morning.
Both petitions were launched by consultants angered by Hunt’s speech at the King’s Fund last week, in which he threatened to impose his terms for the new junior doctor contract and accused the BMA for being out of touch with its members, claiming he had ‘yet to meet’ a doctor not in favour of weekend working.
They follow the success of the #ImInWorkJeremy Twitter campaign trend over the weekend, uniting GPs and hospital doctors in letting Hunt know they were already keeping a seven-day NHS running
The petition launched via Parliament.uk started yesterday, has comfortably surpassed the 10,000 signature target at which the government must issue a response.
It is rapidly ticking upwards towards the 100,000 required to be considered for debate in Parliament, having attracted more than one signature per second. Launched by north London-based consultant in internal medicine Dr Ash Sadighi, it accuses Hunt of ‘alienating the entire workforce of the NHS by threatening to impose a harsh contract and conditions on first consultants and soon the rest of the NHS staff’.
Meanwhile, geriatric consultant Dr Dan Furmedge, who launched the Change.org petition, also said Hunt’s speech had been ‘the last straw’. His petition reads: ‘In essentially calling doctors lazy and suggesting they need “a sense of vocation” he has offended the whole NHS workforce and demonstrated how little regard he has for us and how little he understands what we do.’
• The Challenge Fund pilot that invited FY2 doctors to apply for positions in GP practices has pulled its job advert ‘for editing’ after the RCGP called for urgent clarification over the use of untrained GPs.
Shropdoc said it was ‘sorry for any confusion’ caused by the advert for a community physician to provide the ‘full spectrum’ of GMS consultations.
The RCGP called for urgent clarification from Health Education England (HEE) after learning that FY2 doctors without specialty training were being recruited.