Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill

Debate between Baroness Wolf of Dulwich and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Report stage
Monday 23rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of these amendments, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and my noble friend Lady Gerada, who have outlined the very distinct and different problems for these groups. The Newcastle curriculum is one that I know more about than the other, but it appears to be identical. There are problems for those graduates as they feel that, because of geography, their qualification is effectively second-rate rather than of equal status. That becomes particularly important when we go back to the point I made earlier about recruiting for excellence for our NHS and for people to work here.

My other point is about asylum seeking and refugee doctors—and I am most grateful to the Minister for having had such an open door, both for face-to-face consultation and telephone conversations, which have been helpful in clarifying issues. There are currently eight schemes in the UK which are coming together to co-ordinate and meet the needs of asylum seeking and refugee doctors. This group is different to many others who have come here to train because many were working in their home countries and gained great clinical experience. Their experience in trauma, in particular, can be very useful in major accidents, as they have often managed trauma in really difficult situations. When they come here, however, they need, in effect, to retrain from the beginning, and that takes a huge commitment.

I asked about working as a care assistant deliberately because I know of a Ukrainian refugee doctor who is currently working in that role and has been almost from the time she arrived here, despite being a very senior consultant paediatrician in Ukraine. She has to work as a care assistant to be able to pass all the exams and stages she needs to get through. In her summing up, therefore, it would be very helpful if the Minister can tell us whether she knows how many such doctors there are and what level their experience is; if she cannot today, perhaps she could write to us with that.

Looking forward to future-proofing, I can see the difficulty—though I find it hard to accept—over both Newcastle and Queen Mary curricula. In Committee, we also had the point raised about Bahrain, where the curriculum is, in effect, identical to the Irish-based qualifications. Clause 4(3)(b) of the Bill states that the person within that subsection

“did not spend all or a majority of their time training for that qualification outside Ireland”.

Therefore, I hope the Minister can provide us with firm reassurance that this Bill is future-proofed. The Bahrain curriculum will not be easy to change so that students spend 51% or more of their time in Ireland. If this is not carefully monitored, however, there is a potential danger over the years ahead that another medical school could open an offshore curriculum which was 51% versus 49%, which would mean that it came in under this Bill as a prioritisation. That would then disadvantage the two medical schools we have been debating and which my noble friend Lady Gerada has spoken about and argued for so powerfully today. I therefore hope that the future-proofing aspect will also be addressed in the Minister’s summing up.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I also support Amendments 12, 13 and 15, and will echo the points made about the general implications of the issues here. I declare an interest as an employee of King’s College London. What we are talking about here are, in effect, English medical degrees: that is what they are approved as, and it is what they are seen as by the world. We should pause and think very hard before we give the impression to the world that we do not take our own legislation and regulations seriously, because this really strikes at the heart of the reputation of our higher education system, which has been long earned and is still well deserved.

We are talking about courses of study that are delivered by an overseas campus but it is a medical school of a UK-registered institution. These courses are approved as identical to those delivered within the British Isles by the GMC, and they are completely compliant with the requirements of the Higher Education and Research Act, the Education Reform Act, the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act and the Higher Education (Northern Ireland) Order. It is a very small number of people to whom this matters a lot, but I think it is a major step to say they do not count. Therefore, I too hope the Minister will be able to work towards a resolution of this very distressing issue.