ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, Army medical staff could be drafted in to NHS hospitals this week, it’s been reported this morning, as junior doctors are set to strike at the moment over proposed changes to their contracts.  If the strikes go ahead it would be the first full walk out of doctors in the health service’s history.  Well I’m joined now by the renowned fertility researcher and Labour peer, Lord Robert Winston, a very good morning to you Lord Winston.  Discuss the merits of the junior doctors case in a moment or two but do you feel strike action, however strong your grievance is, strike action by medical staff is the right way forward?

LORD WINSTON: I think in this instance it is because I think Jeremy Hunt has to really be shown that what he is doing is going to be terribly dangerous for the health service and that these doctors are striking because they are altruistic and not because they want to strike.  It is clear if you talk to any of them that they have a very clear issue and a real conscience and of course the health service will be covered by senior doctors like myself.  

DM: But even so, it must have a knock on effect even if it was just through cancelled operations and things like that.  

LORD WINSTON: I suppose if it didn’t have a knock on effect then of course it wouldn’t be effective unfortunately but the trouble is that the health service is struggling like never before under this government, it really is, it’s deeply in debt. The small amount of money that George Osborne has just suggested he puts in will not cover the sort of debts that trusts have got, there is a massive issue with morale and of course the health service has always worked because doctors have been prepared to work against all the odds to get things done.  I think on this occasion there are some serious issues which have not really been fully discussed.  

DM: Touch upon them please, Lord Winston.  

LORD WINSTON: Well firstly, the reason why the NHS is so excellent, why it’s the best NHS, the best health service probably in the world and certainly there are measurements to suggest that, is because of the research we do.  Clinical research is the backbone of the NHS and that’s done by junior hospital doctors who will no longer have time to do that writing up and one of the issues is that again and again there is an antithetical issue about how doctors treat research.  It is not taken seriously in the NHS and with this change in the contract it will have serious effect on what they can read, what they can revise, what they can actually do with patients that are not strictly to do with treatment and of course how they write their papers.  There are huge numbers of junior doctors already having difficulty and this is going to make it worse.  

DM: From what I read from Mr Hunt’s proposals, he is talking about space for, quote/unquote ‘agreed research’.  

LORD WINSTON: Well that’s exactly the point and if you read what Jeremy Farrar says, the head of the Wellcome Trust, he is clearly unhappy about what so far has been coming in from the Department of Health and I think you have to accept that he is not political, he has no axe to grind but he is a very, very famous researcher who runs a very distinguished organisation which funds so much of the work that goes on in the NHS and he is seriously alarmed by this.

DM: Quick thought as a Labour peer about Jeremy Corbyn, do you think he is right in his position on Syria?

LORD WINSTON: Do you know, it’s a really interesting issue because I think whilst I am absolutely not a Corbynista, I think that the Labour party leadership is in disarray, I have to say there is a strong reason why we probably ought to think very carefully before going in.  I think the risk to innocent civilians is massive and it seems like history repeating itself without thinking again what we do after we’ve blotted out parts of ISIS.  I do not believe there is any way you can possibly destroy an entire movement like Daesh, I think it’s going to be impossible.  

DM: But do you think he’s right?  We know Mr Corbyn’s views that he doesn’t personally want to get involved, it’s management of the party, he’s the leader now, do you think he should offer MPs a free vote, a conscience vote or should he say this is our position, my position, and you stick with it?  

LORD WINSTON: Well I think it is a conscience vote, it’s a conscience vote for everybody in parliament as well, I think it  has to be.  I think going to war is a matter of conscience and I think party politics sometimes play too big a part in the decisions that we make.  The idea of the whip deciding what is in the best interests of something seems to me … that’s why the House of Lords works for example.  The House of Lords of course has a whip but it doesn’t take it in the same sort of way, it’s a suggestion that we might vote in a particular way but actually there is no compulsion and there are no sanctions if you decide to vote against your whip.  In the House of Commons of course the sanctions are very serious and that’s what Corbyn is threatening.  

DM: Great to see you, Lord Winston, thank you very much indeed for your thoughts there.