Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill

Lord Patel Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 23rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Patel]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, after “must” insert “first”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and others in the name of Lord Patel, seeks to ensure that UK medical graduates are prioritised above other categories of eligible applicants.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my amendments listed in group one. My amendments should be underpinned by the status of UK medical graduates. The competition to get into medical schools in the United Kingdom is one of the toughest of any country. The ratio of success is about 4:1, with the highest A-level grades obtained, including many at A*, but requirements are higher than that.

At completion, on average, a UK medical graduate has a loan of about £72,000, and it is important that we debate this Bill in that context. I have retabled my amendments from Committee for two reasons. The first is that the debate that we had in Committee concentrated—rightly, maybe—more on international medical graduates or graduates from UK university campuses and not so much on the UK medical school graduates, who seem to be losing out on getting training posts. We have all received many emails from UK graduates and international medical graduates. I, presumably because I had amendments in my name, seemed to receive many more from UK medical graduates. Some noble Lords may have seen a petition on the internet addressed to us, Members of the House of Lords, to pass this Bill unamended, from UK medical graduates. I gather that there are over 4,500 names attached to that petition now.

So why am I putting forward these amendments again? Most other countries—the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and the EU—prioritise their graduates for further training and even employment. Data from the GMC, NHS England, the royal colleges, the BMA and professional journals shows—I accept there is variation, including in how the data could be interpreted—that graduates from the UK find it difficult to get into core and specialist training programmes, for a variety of reasons. They include: increased output from medical schools, which will increase even more in future years; an increase in post-2019 visas for international medical graduates; and training slots have not increased, with the workforce plan increased to accommodate more doctors.

In the UK doctors’ pay negotiations, one of the primary reasons that they gave was that training was an issue. A second issue was working conditions and a third was pay. I have said publicly in this Chamber before, and I repeat now, that I do not subscribe to any doctor at any time withdrawing their services from patients, for no matter what reason. I therefore do not agree with junior doctors going on strike. Despite the fact that they may have a legitimate reason to complain about their training issues, it is still no reason, as far as I am concerned, to withdraw services from patients.

UK training of doctors has three stages: foundation years 1 and 2; core training; and specialty training, including GP training. The GMC informs me that foundation year one training is available to all graduates who graduate from UK universities, although sometimes they find it difficult as the slots are not available until the last minute. Usually, that ought not to be a problem. In my case, it was two weeks before I had to start the job that I secured a position to do surgery in Penzance, having qualified in St Andrews. It was not a place that I had visited before, but I got through it.

In a 2024 report, the GMC says that, in 2023, 77% of doctors completing foundation year 2 did not or could not enter core training. A lot of them, around 13%, had decided not to, I gather, and may have gone overseas. In 2017, international medical graduates whose primary medical qualification was overseas were 47% of those registered with the GMC; in 2023, this was 68%. The 2023 GMC report said that 40% of doctors entering specialty training were international medical graduates.

It is important that we have opportunities for international medical graduates to come to train in the United Kingdom and have employment status in the NHS. But UK doctors should have a fair shot at being able to compete fairly. UK doctors comment that, after foundation year 2, entering specialty training is like falling off a cliff; it is difficult for them to get into specialist training.

NHS England, in annex 3 of its briefing on the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill, says that the potential impact will be an application total of 21,000 for about 10,000 posts, a ratio of 2:1. In 2025 round 1, 28,000 of the 80,000 applications were deemed appointable, according to that document. On competition, annex 4 says that, despite lower competition ratios, over 2,000 appointable UK graduates did not receive an offer in round 1 of 2025.

The expectation, therefore, is that there will be 16,000 UK graduates, a slight increase from last year, applying for core and specialty training, and 26,000 international medical graduates, also a slight increase from last year. That is 42,000, although the NHS England number is 47,000. There is always a variation in the numbers, for reasons I cannot explain. Nonetheless, the ratio is 4:1 for 10,000 slots. The estimate is that 8,000 UK graduates may be forced out of the coming rotation year as they may not have appointments.

The passage of the Bill will mean that priority groups of doctors will also apply for these training slots. I could not find a number for what effect that will have, but maybe the Minister has numbers on how many more doctors will be able to enter specialist training if the priority groups in the Bill are included. So UK graduates, with the expansion of priority groups, will have further competition.

An NHS England publication, with a foreword from Dr Powis and the Chief Medical Officer, says that

“the current bottlenecks in training do not benefit anyone; while some competition has always been a necessary part of medical training and career progression … the current ratios are making sensible career planning and assessment”

for, in my words, UK doctors

“very difficult”.

That is why I put my amendment where I have. I know the later amendments will discuss graduates from other UK campuses being eligible for the priority group, but I will refer to that later. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, made some very interesting points, and I am interested in hearing my noble friend the Minister’s response to his amendments. I doubt I have had as many emails as the noble Lord, in view of his expertise in the whole area of medical training and development, particularly at postgraduate level, but it is hard not to feel sympathetic to both sides of the argument. I feel for those doctors trained overseas who thought they were on a pathway to being accepted for specialty training in this country and have had the rules of the game changed half way through.

Equally, though, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out, we have the ridiculous situation of growing competition from overseas doctors while UK-trained doctors are finding it very hard to get specialist training. This goes to the wider question about this country’s overreliance on doctors from overseas, and the current recruitment from Africa gives me particular concern about the ethics of this process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comments, and I thank the other noble Lords who spoke. I take the points that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made, which are quite important: there needs to be much wider review of the whole issue of medical training and workforce planning, which are linked together. I hope the review that NHS England carried out, published in October 2025, the more recent update on 18 January 2026, which was on the first “diagnostic” phase of the medical training, and the other phases to come will promote that review of medical training, and I hope the Government will back that.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made a similar comment in Committee that we should not prioritise UK medical graduates above others because the others may, and do, provide us with good service and care. I accepted that, and how could I not? In my own department, we regularly—on a yearly basis—took overseas doctors for training in United Kingdom. Some of them remained in this country, and others held high positions overseas. The fact is that 30% of core and specialty training slots go to international medical graduates; 70% go to the UK graduates. That is not a small number but quite a significant number of overall training positions. None the less, I accept that we need international medical graduates to come here and study and work here.

I thank noble Lords for the other comments made. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, asked a very cogent question. I know that the Government say that there will be 1,000 new posts, but that is over three years, so it might be three years hence that we get those. In the meantime, we have a problem with UK medical graduates, and I will single that out, because I hope that the Bill will help with the process of more UK graduates getting the jobs. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe; he was stronger in his support last time than this time, but I can understand why.

I had no intention of putting my amendments to the vote. I had hoped that the Minister would accept them, but she has made it quite clear that she will not. I wish the Bill to be concluded speedily, because it is urgent, and I hope the prioritisation in the Bill will help UK graduates. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

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[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.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I might end up sounding like a broken record, but I hope it is still playing well. I will declare my interests, although they are probably irrelevant. I am an emeritus professor at the University of Dundee and have previously been its chancellor. I am a fellow of the several royal medical colleges, and I am associated with several universities in the United Kingdom that have medical schools.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, on her most eloquent and powerful argument for Queen Mary, Malta to be considered a special case—and she just about succeeded in doing so. Besides that, the broken record bit about me goes back to UK medical graduates. Some 7.6% of graduates of United Kingdom universities are overseas citizens, but they are all trained in the same curriculum and with the same degree as from UK universities. There are several universities that take these students; there are too many to list them all. The overseas campuses of UK universities of course have the same curriculum because the GMC has recognised the institution and therefore its curriculum. The GMC does not give recognition to any training programmes that do not have the same curriculum for graduates. Whether it is a campus or it is associated with the university, the curriculum is what the GMC approves and, in doing so, it therefore approves the institutio;n.

There are other UK university campuses overseas. Newcastle has 107 trainee doctors in Malaysia. I am told by the GMC that Barts London has a university association in Malta that has 69 graduates—and, as we have heard, Queen Mary in London has had a total of 147 graduates from there. Southampton medical school is approved for a medical course in Germany with 23 candidates. St George’s London, as we have heard, had quite a small number; I was told it was nine, but the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, said it was seven. There are two more schools that are seeking GMC approval: Swansea in Mauritius and Exeter in Athens. I have no doubt that other medical schools will also jump on the same bandwagon and that, after today’s debate, they will make sure that their curriculum is similar to those followed in the UK so that the degrees from their overseas campuses are also recognised.

I have no objections to any of those—as I said, the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, made a very strong case for Queen Mary in Malta—but I do point out that, if we add these all up, we will increase the priority groups that will challenge UK medical graduates further. That is the only case I am making.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Patel, I apologise for coming back to the substance of the debate on the first group.

We should pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, for how she has approached these issues. Her amendments, which I agree with, are very tightly drawn to Malta and Newcastle. She has been engaged with my noble friend the Minister and has asked for certain assurances from her; I hope my noble friend will be able to respond to them.

This identifies the madness of the situation that we have. UK universities with campuses abroad often have students coming from the UK; they go over there to study in the hope that they can then come back to the NHS and apply for specialty training places. If ever one wanted a reason for why we need a fundamental, wholesale review and reform of the gamut of medical training, this is it.

I chided the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, about the royal colleges’ leadership in this area, because the colleges should take leadership. Through her leadership of her college, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, we have examples of the kind of leadership that we desperately need now from the medical royal colleges.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the thoughtful contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.

I give our strong support for Amendments 12, 13 and 15, which have been so convincingly spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, and indeed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay of Llandaff and Lady Wolf of Dulwich. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, I thank the Minister for her engagement with us on this particular issue, despite the swift passage of the Bill and the rather disappointing response during those meetings.

As I have declared at previous stages, I am the former chair of the council of Queen Mary University of London. My concern is for many of the medical students at the Queen Mary Malta Campus and Newcastle’s Malaysia campus who are affected by the Bill. That is the most pressing issue at hand: the human cost of this legislation in its current form. Over the last few weeks, we have received deeply distressed correspondence from these medical students. Many of them are British citizens who went overseas to study, precisely because of the lack of medical school places here. These students enrolled in GMC-approved courses on the explicit, documented understanding that their degrees were completely identical to those delivered in London or Newcastle, and that they would enter the UK foundation programme on equal terms. To pull the rug from under them now—changing their status to international, mid-cycle, just as they prepare to graduate—is procedurally unfair and totally unacceptable. They made irreversible life and financial decisions based on over a decade of consistent UK Government practice. We cannot treat the futures of our UK-registered university students with such disregard.

In Committee and in her subsequent letter to Peers dated 20 February, the Minister set out her reasons for resisting the inclusion of these students. On these Benches, we have listened carefully. The amendments before the House have been entirely redrafted to address and dismantle every single one of those technical concerns.

First, the Minister argued that the Government cannot control the numbers from overseas campuses, fearing a loophole that would place financial pressure on the NHS and undermine workforce planning. We can fix this. Amendment 12 would explicitly restrict eligibility to

“an overseas campus of a … UK-registered institution that is extant on the day on which this Act is passed”.

The door is firmly shut to future creep. No university can open a new campus tomorrow and exploit this route in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Patel, described.

Further, to address the Minister’s specific fear of uncontrolled numbers, Amendments 13 and 15 would grant the Secretary of State a new statutory power to explicitly cap the maximum number of eligible persons from these campuses. With roughly 50 to 70 graduates a year from Malta and around 120 from Malaysia, we are talking about fewer than 200 students in a system of over 11,000 places. They represent zero threat to workforce planning and, with this amendment, the Government would hold the lever to control the volume. From our conversations, I know that the Minister believes that this would mean opening the door to Irish university campuses and a total of 300 students because of the Windsor agreement. I hope the Minister will explain why they need to be linked when she speaks directly to Amendment 12A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Darzi.

Secondly, the Minister argued in her letter that these students should be excluded because they lack familiarity with local epidemiology in UK clinical placements. With the greatest respect, that argument simply does not hold water either. As the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, with her immense medical experience, has explained, the primary conditions driving NHS demand are fundamentally the same across these nations. Crucially, these students study exactly the same curriculum, take the same UK medical licensing assessment and graduate with the identical GMC-approved primary medical qualification as their peers in the UK. We have the evidence of four graduated cohorts from Malta and those of over 10 years in Malaysia, who have transitioned seamlessly and safely into NHS practice.

As we have discussed before, if the Government truly believe that these students lack clinical familiarity, how can they justify Clause 4 of their own Bill? The Bill prioritises graduates from Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. A graduate from Liechtenstein has no UK medical degree, has not sat the UK assessments and has no training in UK epidemiology. We are told that this is due to free trade agreements requiring us to recognise comparable qualifications. It is legally and diplomatically absurd to voluntarily prioritise comparable qualifications from the EEA while rejecting identical qualifications from our own UK public universities.

Thirdly, the Minister cites the need to protect British taxpayers’ investment. The students at Queen Mary in Malta and Newcastle University in Malaysia are self-funded. They provide the NHS with fully trained, UK-aligned doctors at zero educational cost to the public purse. Turning away a pipeline of debt-free, UK-trained doctors is economically illiterate and contradicts the Government’s own value-for-money logic.

Finally, as I said at Second Reading, we risk breaking a solemn international commitment. Since 2009, the UK and Malta have operated under a unique mutual recognition agreement regarding the foundation programme, which was explicitly renewed by the Department of Health as recently as 2024. To sever this now, even in spirit, damages our bilateral relations and actively sabotages the Department for Education’s own strategy to export British higher education globally.

These amendments are safe, narrow and pragmatic, as has been described. They offer the Government exactly what they ask for—control, caps and the closure of loopholes—they protect a tiny cohort of students from unacceptable mid-term uncertainty and they honour our international agreements. I strongly urge the Minister to accept this solution.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise. I should have said that the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, emailed me at noon today to apologise that he could not be here because he had a patient to look after. However, I think the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, covered his amendment adequately.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, briefly, I offer our support from these Benches to Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada.

I want to talk about the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I am sure that other noble Lords will have had an email from a woman from Ukraine, who set out her concerns. We as a nation have proudly welcomed and given safe sanctuary to people from Ukraine, predominantly women and children. However, because of the conflict in her country she has not been able to fulfil her dream of being a doctor; she has tried to navigate the system, through working as a care worker, and would like us to be able to support her.

I plead to the Minister: can we not have some flexibility, at least when it comes to specific circumstances? We have been so generous as a nation in welcoming those people, who, if they had their way, would be in their country. They want to continue building on the education that they had in their nation. I am sure that there will be others as well. Is there some flexibility? I hope that the Minister can comment on that.

On the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, when we had this discussion before the Recess it was clear that we were asking for those two overseas medical schools. They are the only ones that are active now. The amendments are clear that no other schools would be allowed to open up and go through the loophole that some noble Lords have talked about. We are talking about very small numbers. However, those numbers are important because we have also had emails from British nationals who have gone to study abroad with an expectation. As I said on my amendments in the previous group, we are changing the rules for them mid-cycle. There must be some level of flexibility.

We want the Bill to go through, but we would like it to be a bit fairer than it is. I talked previously about the unintended consequences of pushing this though. A lot of the funding for these two campuses comes from overseas. It is not costing the UK taxpayer money, but it is a pipeline, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones said. Having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, and spoken to my noble friend Lord Shipley, I know that they very strongly support the overseas campus that Newcastle University has in Malaysia. I hope that the Minister supports those two universities. There are no others in these circumstances.

Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill

Lord Patel Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Patel]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, after “must” insert “first”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and others in the name of Lord Patel, seeks to ensure that UK medical graduates are prioritised above other categories of eligible applicants.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, my name is also attached to Amendments 3, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13 and 14, which are consequential, so I will not speak to them. This may be the briefest of introductions to any amendment.

My amendment tries to prioritise—which is the main theme of the Bill—UK medical graduates for training in UK programmes. The Bill’s Long Title says it is to:

“Make provision about the prioritisation of graduates from medical schools in the United Kingdom and certain other persons for places on medical training programmes”.


In Clause 1, this therefore also includes

“persons in the priority group”.

In Clause 2, it includes person not only in the priority group but also, in subsection (2), persons who are

“a British citizen … a Commonwealth citizen who has the right of abode in the United Kingdom … an Irish citizen who does not require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom … a person with indefinite leave to enter or remain … a person who has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom”

and so on. Similarly, Clauses 3 and 4 describe the priority group as including not only UK medical school graduates but many others, including those from countries with which the UK has made a trade deal.

All those priority groups will be able to apply for the same jobs as UK medical graduates. Add to that—several amendments on this are coming later—that the graduates of UK universities that have overseas campuses will also be included in the priority group. They are not all in the amendments today, but if these amendments are accepted, there are other universities not listed which have overseas campuses, such as the two I know—Dundee, for instance—although I did not table an amendment on that.

My amendment is because of the enormous number of emails that we have had, both from UK graduates and overseas graduates who cannot find jobs. I know there are subsequent amendments coming later about those international graduates who are now stuck in a bottleneck for this year, but that is a separate issue. My amendment does not refer to that; it refers to UK medical graduates.

We heard a story on the BBC about Emma, who was one of the 1,000 graduates who cannot get a two-year foundation slot so she cannot progress at all. She cannot find a locum job because they are all full. We heard of people who cannot enter the specialty training programme at years 1 and 2 because the competition for the specialty training programme is four applications for one job. We have 50,000 international medical graduates applying for a job for 2025, for 10,000 slots. If we cannot get UK graduates to find jobs in training programmes, that is scandalous. We could cut the number of medical students—but on the other hand, we are going to increase the number of medical students, and that will compound the issue for future applications for training.

By the way, I am not saying that others in the priority group in these clauses are not to be considered for a job. All I am saying is that UK medical graduates should be prioritised. The definition says “UK medical graduates”, but there are international students who go to our medical schools and therefore they are UK medical school graduates, so we include them. They are about 7% of the total medical graduates of UK universities. My amendment only seeks to prioritise UK medical graduates, who should be considered first—not that the others will not be considered or get jobs in whatever they come to do. This includes the subsequent amendments about overseas campuses and other universities.

I hope that the Opposition Benches will agree that UK medical graduates ought to be the first priority. I doubt that the noble Baroness the Minister will accept my amendment—the Government want this Bill to go through as an emergency Bill and not to be held up because, otherwise, it will run out of time—but I hope that, at the Dispatch Box, while not accepting the amendment, she will recognise that UK medical graduates must have priority above others for training slots. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 2. The clerks suggested changing the wording to what is now there. It is a probing amendment, and like those of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, it could be applied to other clauses as well. It is about the principle. My strong view is that we have opened up medical schools and made more placements because we want to make sure that we have an ongoing workforce. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, in his place. He will have done work not only for Health Secretary Wes Streeting recently but previously in making sure that we have a strong workforce pipeline.

I am conscious that many medical schools, by way of survival, by way of diversity, have opened up a number of places. Admittedly, this is still quite small compared with the number of UK citizens going to medical school. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, we have a curious definition in this legislation—that a UK medical graduate is simply somebody who went to a UK medical school. I do not think that is what the public would think that this is about. From a lot of the emails, I do not think that it is what a lot of doctors appreciate either—although I appreciate that it is the position of the BMA, which does not want to differentiate in that regard.

We have young people taking on debt by investing in their own education and several billion pounds being put in by the UK Government, by the UK taxpayer, to have this pipeline. Therefore, it is vital to have what my amendment seeks—a set prioritisation in this legislation and not, as the Minister said the other day, a “just one group and then no more” kind of prioritisation. It is vital that UK citizens are given priority.

It is important to look at some of the analysis. It is not the case that all training posts could be filled by UK citizens who have trained to be doctors—far from it. We would not have GPs coming through. According to the 2024 analysis, only about half of the GPs going on the ST1 or CT1 were from UK medical schools. There is a whole series of issues, and we are seeing this in different elements including psychiatry and paediatrics—very few UK medical students, it seems, want to do paediatrics. I could go on with the series, but the point is clear: this is not about excluding people from the rest of the world coming to work in this country or to fill key roles in the NHS; it is about ensuring that our investment is prioritised on UK citizens.

There is a certain peculiarity, which will come up in other groups, about what then happens with the Republic of Ireland and similar. I am not seeking to get into that debate; perhaps we will a bit later.

I want to get a sense of this from the Minister. One thing that is clear in the statistics, and which the Minister and the Department of Health should be seeking to understand more, is that for quite a wide range of the training courses UK students are turning down the opportunity, once they have been offered placements. Why is that? For general practice, I think that only 57% are accepting. I am conscious that people might get posted around the country, but that needs careful scrutiny as well.

I do not wish to suggest in any way that we are not welcoming people from different parts of the world, but it should go back to trying to make sure that we are addressing particular gaps in our NHS workforce, now and in the future, not squeezing people out, and recognising the work that has been done to increase the potential numbers in home-grown talent.

Those of us who spoke at Second Reading have, in the last week, had a lot of emails coming in. I completely understand that there are different stories. For a brief time, when I was Health Secretary, a by-line suggested that I thought everybody should disappear to Australia—far from it. We cannot stop people leaving this country to go to Australia or elsewhere in the world, but we should be making sure that the reason they are choosing to go elsewhere is not because they cannot get a training place here when they have been deemed appointable. Ideally, they would be offered a role. That is something we can fix with this legislation. I hope the Government will rethink their approach to this during the passage of the Bill.

I apologise to the Committee that I will not be here to deal with my amendment later on, but I know that the Front Bench will do so. The time is pressing to get this right. I had not realised quite how soon a variety of decisions need to be made: I believe they need to be made before, or certainly within a few days of, Easter. It is critical that the Government think again. I am sure that, with encouragement from the Committee and from very distinguished medical practitioners, current and past, they will do so. That is why I commend my amendment to the Committee.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords for their helpful contributions to this debate. Amendments 1, 3, 6 to 8 and 12 to 14, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, seek to create tiered categories of prioritisation for the UK foundation programme and specialty programmes. Taken together, they would require places to be allocated to UK medical graduates in the first instance, and then to applicants in the other prioritised categories specified in the Bill. As noble Lords have observed, the Bill sets clear priority groups, but it does not make rankings within these groups, and that is what we are looking at.

I welcome my noble friend Lord Darzi, not least because the review that he undertook for the Government in 2024 recommended that we should prioritise medical training, for all the reasons given by the noble Lords who support it. I will return to this whole area when we debate a later group, but on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Darzi—this will perhaps also be helpful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe—alongside UK graduates, we are prioritising in the Bill graduates from Ireland and the EFTA countries. This reflects the special nature of our relationship with Ireland—specifically, our reciprocal rights of movement and employment—and our obligations under international trade agreements with the EFTA countries, which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, referred to, that require consistent treatment of these graduates in access to medical training. The amendments that we are looking at would mean that we could not honour these agreements. That, by its nature and definition, would create huge difficulties.

On specialty training, these amendments would also mean that we could not effectively deliver on our policy intention to prioritise applicants with significant NHS experience who understand how the health service works and how to meet the needs of the UK population. It might be helpful if I summarise this by saying that the Bill sets out what I would regard as a binary system where applicants are either prioritised or not. Clearly, once that prioritisation has happened, the normal processes will apply to establish who the appointable applicants are, to fill the posts, and so on.

Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks to create tiered categories of prioritisation for the UK foundation programme and to prioritise UK medical graduates who are British citizens above all other applicants. The Bill as drafted prioritises all UK medical graduates who meet the criteria, regardless of their citizenship status. It might be helpful to the noble Lords, Lord Mohammed and Lord Clement-Jones, to restate that what matters is where a doctor is trained, not where they are born. UK-trained medical graduates have undertaken curricula, clinical placements and assessment standards aligned to the NHS, and are therefore best prepared to move directly into NHS practice.

The Government are committed to prioritising those doctors who have already spent a significant part of their education within the NHS and understand how the health service works and how to meet the needs of the UK population, not least because—this is an issue that we have discussed many times—these doctors are more likely to remain in the NHS for longer, supporting the sustainable medical workforce for the future that we are all looking at.

As I set out in relation to the previous set of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, this amendment would also mean that we would not be honouring the special nature of our relationship with Ireland and obligations under trade agreements with EFTA countries. I emphasise again in the Chamber today that prioritisation does not mean exclusion. All eligible applicants will still be able to apply and will be offered places if vacancies remain after prioritised applicants have received offers, which we expect to be the case particularly in certain areas.

My noble friend Lord Winston raised a question about the Bill in respect of highly skilled overseas doctors and particularly referenced clinical academics. As I have said, it is not exclusion from applying—it is prioritisation. It may be helpful more broadly for me to emphasise that there are likely to be opportunities in specialties such as general practice, core psychiatry and internal medicine, because historically they attract fewer applicants from the groups that we are prioritising for 2026. I understand the point that my noble friend is making, but we have to focus on the core purpose of the Bill. With that, I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

Obviously, the Minister is not accepting my amendment, but she makes the point that all the priority groups will be treated in the same way—whatever the definition is of people in the priority group, they will all be grouped together as a priority, and that would include UK medical graduates. What assessment have the Government made of the effect that it will have on UK medical school graduates to include all the others in the priority group? What disadvantage will that put UK medical graduates to? Will it be minimal, medium or a lot?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

We do not anticipate that that is going to cause a problem. The noble Lord did not specifically refer to the EFTA countries, but I should like to. Some of them will not produce any suitable people who are likely to be included, so in our modelling we do not anticipate that there will be a problem. What matters is patient care and getting people with the right training who understand what the NHS is about, understand the culture of the NHS and provide as best as they can. That is what the whole Bill is directed at doing and prioritising.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I shall be very pleased to do that.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken today, no matter which amendment they spoke to, and I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for his strong support for my amendment. More importantly, he said that UK medical graduates need to be prioritised and should not have to enter into competition with others whose graduation is not from this country. I know that the Minister was not able to say that UK graduates would be seen to be prioritised; I understand that. Of course, these debates help, because the outside world is interested in what is said here. I hope that particularly those who make decisions about interviewing or selecting for interview for training programmes will get the message, take note of this debate and bear in mind what it was all about. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

the past year, and that more than a third of radiology departments were subjected to a ban on hiring clinical radiologists. Given what needs to happen to improve cancer outcomes in line with the new cancer plan, we clearly want an end to the restrictions placed on hiring for these crucial specialists.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, to which I have added my name. I am not going to repeat much of what he said, but I support it because when, in 2026, both the UK and overseas graduates are further down the process of applying—and some have even been asked to come for interview—they will now not be able to continue. That seems morally and ethically wrong, so I support the amendments. I also support the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Howe. He made his points very strongly.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my role as a pro-chancellor of Cardiff University, and that I have until recently been an observer on the Medical Schools Council; I am still in touch with it.

This group of amendments seems incredibly important for our international reputation for fairness and consistency in what we commit to, but also in wanting excellence in our NHS. Therefore, there needs to be a sophisticated way of prioritising. One of those important areas is the contribution to the NHS, especially during Covid and major events, when some have gone way above what is normally expected and come back from holiday or maternity leave, or whatever, to deal with a major incident, while others have perhaps not always been quite so flexible.

We certainly have a crisis and must deal with it, so this is not in any way to say that we should not be doing this, but the timing is the worry. I will come on to the other degrees in the next group. Can the Minister explain whether the Oriel system itself is a block to incorporating the flexibility that these amendments ask for? There is a real worry among some that the Oriel system is a rate-limiting step, rather than being flexible enough to be rapidly reprogrammed appropriately to allow the intention of these amendments to be incorporated at great speed, and therefore redress the accusation of unfairness.

National Cancer Plan

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s support for the cancer plan. I should have mentioned this. I will be honest: even as a Minister, I do not always pay full attention to the foreword, and I am sure that other former Ministers might share that, within a plan, but I commend this one to noble Lords, not least because the Secretary of State himself talked about his own experience of being told he had kidney cancer. He described his world being turned upside down. He talked about fear and foreboding, as does our Minister, Ashley Dalton MP. They both talked about fear and foreboding and the need to turn that round with action. That kind of drive, as well as the facts before us, drive this plan.

On the point about a cancer prevention plan and the question of where the strategy is for the reduction of obesity and so on, I say that this is a plan to be read alongside our other commitments. It builds on the 10-year health plan, which laid out the way we would be going forward with our shifts. This is about turning round the whole cancer pathway.

To the point specifically about prevention, I heard what the noble Lord said. We do not take the view that it is “just bad luck”. Where there is prevention, we should absolutely tackle that.

The plan tackles the causes head-on, not just by talking but with government action to cut smoking with the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, reduce obesity, act on alcohol harm and protect people from dangerous UV exposure, including through sunbeds. No one should lose someone to cancer that should have been prevented. We will not ignore the communities that are hit hardest. By having those preventions, we are supporting the communities that are hit hardest. Rolling out lung cancer screening more extensively will be one of the areas of importance.

I referred earlier to cancer alliances. They will promote, for example, new catch-up schemes to enable young people who have missed out on the HPV vaccination at school. They can have it administered at their local pharmacy. We are not leaving matters to chance. We are rolling out home testing kits for cervical cancer for those who do not go to appointments for a range of reasons, rather than offering only one opportunity.

In all these ways, the national cancer plan tackles the causes of cancer. We will continue to see that through. As the noble Lord knows, moving from sickness to prevention is a key factor in our 10-year plan.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the national cancer plan, but I am not here to blow the Government’s trumpet. I will pick up on some of the points.

This is an ambitious plan, and that is good, because it might act as a catalyst for some progress. However, if that progress is to be achieved, the Government need to commit much more than what the cancer plan suggests. The plan suggests:

“Every patient will get a personalised assessment of their needs and a personal cancer plan—a complete support plan complementing their diagnosis and treatment”


and focusing on their wider needs. It goes on to say:

“Every patient will have a named neighbourhood care lead to coordinate their care and support after treatment”.


If that can be achieved, it will be fantastic. Apart from all the technological advances that we will have to fund in research terms, it is ambitious to suggest that liquid blood tests and cancer vaccines could be developed, be tested and be available tomorrow. It could be a long-term shot. Without investment, that will not happen. One of the key areas of deficiency is that there is nothing on what the manpower requirements would be and how this will fit into the manpower plan that the Government already have.

I heard what the Minister said about prevention. I heard nothing about developing cancer centres; we know from experience that outcomes are best when patients are treated in cancer centres, rather than in every hospital in the country. We have no targets to eliminate cancer. For example, it is possible to eliminate cervical cancer by a proper immunisation programme of HPV vaccines.

I am allowed only to ask questions, but it would be nice to have a longer debate. We never had one on the national health plan either. I hope that could be managed somehow.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

That last point will, of course, be drawn to the attention of the usual channels. I too would welcome a debate on this. Noble Lords might wish to note that when they have an opportunity to suggest or apply for debates.

The noble Lord’s last point was about elimination of cancer. That is possible in some cases. I am glad that he mentioned cervical cancer. I mentioned in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, that we have committed to catch-up HPV vaccination campaigns from this year, to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040. That is absolutely the right thing to do, and to introduce the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which I hope will become an Act, to phase out smoking and reduce youth vaping, which can be a gateway to smoking. That will also reduce risk factors.

The noble Lord, Lord Patel, is always right to press us to go further. I understand that. This is a plan for the long term but with staging posts along the way. We have already made progress. For example, I was very pleased when we announced a trial called EDITH for breast cancer screening, to harness the benefits of AI, working with operatives for sped up and more accurate diagnoses. This is one example and is to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised about AI.

I hear what the noble Lord says about cancer centres. We are seeking to move treatment and diagnosis from hospitals to community. That is one model, but there are others, as the noble Lord would acknowledge. It is right to push us to go further, but what sets this plan apart is not just its level of ambition and its recognition that all is not right in the world but that it is setting out how we will get there. However, I welcome the transparency and leadership which is attached to this—which noble Lords have called for. This plan merits a lot of attention and support. I shall be pleased to discuss it in this Chamber further.

Baby Milk Powder: Cereulide

Lord Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

Obviously, we are very concerned about toxins and ensuring that there is no damage done to people: that is the reason for the product recall. The effect of this is that it creates bacteria, so it is like food poisoning in that respect.

With regard to what the noble Baroness has said about ARA oil, the concern of the FSA is very much about safety. What has happened here, as I understand, is that ARA oil is a very common ingredient, but this one appears to have had some contamination, which has affected certain batches, and it is those that are being recalled.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, what the Minister said is correct, but only partially. Arachidonic acid is the key component that may contain bacillus cereus, which is the product that produces the toxin cereulide, which causes problems for babies including vomiting and diarrhoea. It is the same as any bacteria or virus that causes the gut rot that we often experience. It is a supply chain problem and the current regulatory mechanism relies on self-regulation. That is what needs to be addressed. We had a similar problem in 2008 with another chemical called melamine, which was in milk products and caused kidney damage to babies. Does the Minister agree that it is the regulation of the supply chain and production that needs to be addressed?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

As ever, the noble Lord has put things better than I did. I understand the point he is making. The FSA’s role, certainly in the incident response, includes chasing supply chains to identify any additional potential products and businesses. I certainly agree that it is very important to stem any difficulty. But, as it is a live incident, the only point I would make, as I said to the noble Baroness, is that the focus is very much on managing the situation. Therefore, there has not been the opportunity to look into the detail that I agree it needs. That will happen, as it always does, in an incident such as this.

Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill

Lord Patel Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 4th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, when there is such a short Bill, there is a temptation to repeat what has already been said in great detail, because it has not been said by me. I will not succumb to that temptation but will briefly point out the areas where I agree with what has been said, particularly by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

In the many letters and emails—hundreds of them—that I have received, two things stood out. One was the grievance felt by people who were already in the process of applying for the jobs; they now feel as if they have been thrown to the wolves. The other lot were the people who are British citizens who trained overseas and cannot now access training in our programmes. There is one other minority group: those who felt that they have had some experience in the NHS, but it is not as yet defined how much of their experience, starting in 2027, will be counted. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred to the immigration requirements which may or may not be counted, but that produces another. These are the groups that feel disadvantaged. What I felt on receiving these letters was that we are making people who have serviced our NHS for decades feel they are no longer required and are to be abandoned. I hope we do not give that impression.

Having said that, I recognise that, in principle, the idea that UK medical graduates should be prioritised for jobs in our NHS is correct, because it is not right that they cannot get the jobs they apply for, particularly in foundation and specialist training. On the foundation programme in Clause 1, I am concerned that British citizens who may have trained in GMC-approved institutions with the same kind of curriculum described by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, cannot be considered for that. I have already made the point about specialist training programmes and those who have gone through the process of applying in good faith. We do not as yet know what experience will be counted from 2027 onwards, so I hope the Minister can comment on that.

Clause 4 refers to a “UK medical graduate”, and says:

“‘UK medical graduate’ means a person who holds a primary United Kingdom qualification”.


It does not say a “UK citizen” who is qualified. Does that mean that an overseas student attending medical courses in our universities, who is therefore a graduate of our universities, qualifies or not? I might be wrong in my interpretation. The clause continues:

“but does not include a person”

with

“a majority of their … training for that qualification outside the British Islands”.

Some of our universities run joint courses. I am a professor emeritus of the University of Dundee, which, for instance, runs one course for Malaysian students. They do part of their training in Malaysia and finish their clinical training in the UK, at Dundee. The Bill refers to a majority of their training but, in a five-year course, if the overseas student does three years in a UK university, does that count as a majority of their training in the United Kingdom?

I am glad that the Minister alluded to refugee status and was pleased to hear what she said. That was to be one of my points, because I have had representation from Ukrainian refugees who are already working in the NHS, and whose status would otherwise have been removed.

Clause 4(5) says:

“‘primary medical qualification’ means a qualification that is treated by the General Medical Council as equivalent to a primary United Kingdom qualification within the meaning of the Medical Act”.

There are lots of institutions which the GMC recognises as equivalent, but we do not regard their graduates as UK graduates, although they do the same curriculum. Universities such as Newcastle have already been mentioned several times. They have been encouraged by the education department to open campuses, as other universities have been, and to provide the same curriculum. There are then graduates of Queen Mary University, Newcastle University or Dundee University. Their status is not quite clear.

I am concerned about these issues and hope that we will be able to have greater clarification. But I accept that, in principle, prioritising postgraduate medical training for UK graduates is correct.

Maternal Mortality

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I am glad to say that my noble friend Lady Amos will be very much focusing on this area. I referred earlier to the maternal care bundle, which focuses on the five main causes of maternal death and harm, as well as on setting up best practice. A number of the risk factors are particularly associated with groups who live in areas of greater disadvantage, those who have pre-existing conditions and, as the noble Lord rightly says, sadly, black women, who are three times more likely to die—something that is totally unacceptable in any day and age, but certainly now. We cannot allow this to go on. That is why we have picked up a key recommendation from the Black Maternal Health inquiry for mechanisms for surveillance of severe maternal morbidity. The first data are expected in the summer.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, a confidential inquiry into maternal deaths is a good indicator of the quality of maternity services. The fact that the rate has gone up from 9 per 100,000 in my time to 12.8 now suggests that there is a failure of maternity services. To use an example, 155 women who had a history of psychiatric problems—mental health problems—died within a year of delivering a baby. That compares to the total number of 611 maternal deaths. It is a significant number, and yet the specialist perinatal maternity health services that are supposed to look after women with a mental health history have failed. It should be a duty on ICBs to produce a plan, so that women with a mental health history are looked after and have a care plan during pregnancy.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

This is absolutely crucial. I welcome that, as of June last year, maternal mental health services are available in all parts of England. We also now have 153 operational mother and baby unit beds providing in-patient care to women experiencing severe mental health difficulties during and before pregnancy. In addition, mental health services are available for women who have pre-existing mental health needs, as well as for those who experience challenges because of their pregnancy or labour. The GP check-up six to eight weeks after birth is absolutely crucial.

Rare Cancers Bill

Lord Patel Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

I thank the sponsors of this Bill, Dr Scott Arthur and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott of Whitburn Bay, for bringing it to this House. Noble Lords must excuse me if I am a bit emotional after listening to the stories, because I too have experienced grief recently due to rare cancer.

I support this Bill strongly, and I hope we will give it swift passage through this House, unamended, so that it can be on the statute book. However, I have one or two concerns. First, I understand the need for the review relating to marketing authorisation, because we need drugs to be developed urgently and we therefore require regulation to change to allow for this. I look forward to listening to the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, about the novel ways in which clinical trials can be conducted to speed up this process. I have concerns about the timelines. The Bill gives hope to people with rare cancers, from diagnosis of terminal illness to, we hope, treatment. That is what we hope the Bill will do, but a timeline of three years to carry out a review, with no plan for implementation of that review, seems rather long. Timelines for processes and progress are measured in years, while timelines for tumours to advance are measured in weeks. Patients with rare cancers cannot wait long, so I hope we will address the issue of timelines.

That applies also to the reports that are to be produced every three years, as indicated in the Bill. The idea that there will be a lead clinician for specialist rare cancers, with a duty to guide, co-ordinate and promote research for those cancers, is a good one. As we have heard, funding for rare cancers is abysmally low—about 1/10th of total government funding for research related to cancer goes to rare cancers. That must change, because 50% of deaths related to cancer are the result of rare cancers. Unless we change that, we will not make a bit of difference.

Research is important, but the bedrock of research is the requirement that all these rare tumours are genetically sequenced, so that drugs that already exist can be repurposed to treat other diseases. I will give the House an example: BRAF V600E, the gene associated with certain forms of melanoma, was found to be important in effectively treating certain kinds of brain cancer, and in successfully treating people with rare breast cancers. Charities such as Salivary Gland Cancer UK, which has given me a good brief, and Brain Cancer Justice have pleaded for genomic sequencing of tumours. We must do this for each and every case, to build up a registry—not just of patients who have suffered from rare cancers but patients who are on the register with a tumour.

As Brain Cancer Justice has asked for, we should make sure that tumours are frozen at the point that they are obtained. Without frozen tissues, we will not be able to carry out molecular studies in the future to determine whether there are genes that are affected, and therefore drugs that could be developed related to those genes. It is important that we create a registry, not just a database of patients. I hope this Bill gives much hope to patients, and I hope it will get on to the statute book.

Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My noble friend rightly refers, as I did earlier, to the training bottleneck. The Secretary of State was glad to acknowledge the need to tackle training. While he felt that there was no point on pay to be accepted, he certainly felt that the BMA resident doctors committee had a good point on jobs. To be honest, that is why it is so disappointing to be where we are today.

I will pass on my noble friend’s generous comments to the Secretary of State. He offered to introduce emergency legislation in the new year to prioritise UK medical graduates and other doctors with significant experience of working in the NHS in speciality training posts. That would have made a huge difference, but it has been rejected. He also offered to increase the number of training posts over the next three years, from the 1,000 that was originally announced to 4,000, bringing forward 1,000 of those training posts to start next year—that would have made a huge difference. I could go on, but I have made my point.

I agree with my noble friend’s point about acknowledging the role of nurses. In fact, if my noble friend will allow me, I will go further: we are talking about the whole healthcare team. That is another point to the issue on pay: while the BMA doctors committee continues to press for a pay deal far in excess of anything that anyone else is getting, the impact across the NHS, both on staff and on services, continues to be under threat—and we cannot allow that.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, as a doctor, I feel that a doctor withdrawing or withholding services from a patient is dishonourable and unethical—full stop. I find no reason that I can support for a doctor to withdraw their services, because their patients are trusting them with their lives. As far as I am concerned, junior and senior doctors should never go on strike, whether or not the issue with pay is justified—that is a separate issue; there are other ways to discuss and handle that. In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, about what should happen now, junior doctors or resident doctors, or whatever they call themselves, should go back to work and not go on strike—not now and not ever.

There is a separate and long-standing issue with training, which has been referred to. Some years ago I reviewed medical training and was chairman of the Specialist Training Authority. There is a need now to review doctors’ training completely, particularly postgraduate training. It is not sufficient to allow for more training posts—that does not solve the issue. What is required is a complete review of the training of speciality doctors. I hope that the Secretary of State, in his discussions, can make that offer and set up a review. I have no reason whatever to support the junior doctors’ strike.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Lord is an honourable man, as we all know in your Lordships’ House. I heard his comments on how he sees withdrawing labour in this regard, and I hope they are heard more widely. He makes a good point about reviewing training. Unfortunately, we are currently in the position of having made an offer that was rejected. The offer we made is not going ahead, so I cannot give the commitments that the noble Lord might like. We will deal with the strikes in the first instance, as I know noble Lords would expect. I am sure that if we ever get back to a constructive discussion, the issue of a review could be put forward, as the noble Lord suggested.

Emergency Adrenaline

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

This is an important part of the availability, as the noble Lord has highlighted. The kind of issues under consideration when we look at the availability of these welcome products include, in addition to their ease of use without specialist training in community settings and their use through proper training, suitability for different age groups and the temperature sensitivity of the products. Training will be part of how we look at developing the workforce plan, but I take the point about assessing what training is needed when we think about where they will be available. That is very much part of our consideration.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, based on the statistics the Minister just cited about the number of lives that would be saved if emergency adrenaline was easily available in the community, can she say what training would be required? If the drug is given inadvertently to a person who is not in anaphylactic shock, what will happen?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises a point on the practical and safety concerns that we would need to consider in widening access to adrenaline in the community. I should add that that would be regardless of the administration method. On his point, and following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, it is essential that training ensures safe administration, whatever the formulation, because we do not want to create an unsafe environment. The training will be appropriate to what is needed. However, I must emphasise that we are in the process of considering this, but with a positive outlook and an intent to provide.

Brain Tumours: Causes and Treatment

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for promising us a cancer plan by the beginning of next year. I hope it will be forthcoming, because it will be good to look at how cancer care will change. Regarding brain tumours, the problem is that the symptoms are often vague and mild, so early diagnosis is much more difficult. We need more research into the early diagnosis of tumours. Furthermore, we need much more research than the numbers mentioned by the Minister. One of the success stories, one hopes, in 2026 will be drug gene therapy and viral immunotherapy, which will be put through clinical trials early next year to treat glioblastoma, the major brain tumour killer. I hope we will have more funding, because £30 million, £40 million or even £50 million will not do.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I want to convey to the noble Lord our ambition in this area. I completely accept the point he makes—although not all of them—about the challenge of diagnosing rarer cancers, including brain tumours. Research is absolutely vital. Last September, we announced new research funding opportunities, bringing the brain cancer research community together, because we want to drive step change for patients in the way the noble Lord seeks. Funding decisions will arise from this call, and announcements are expected imminently.