Welfare of Doctors

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the welfare of doctors.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. Our NHS is described as “broken”. Gigantic waiting lists; ambulance delays; collapsed confidence that the NHS is there when we need it; poor access to general practice, dentistry and pharmacy; and, disgracefully, falling life expectancy in some places—these are all failures of the last Government, who could not look after the NHS despite record funding. Labour must mend the NHS; we have no choice. We invented the NHS. We fixed it before and we will fix it again.

In this debate, I speak about the people who work in the NHS. There are nearly 1.5 million of them, all contributing in their own way, but let me speak specifically about our doctors. Doctors in this country are in crisis. They are leaving the profession, retiring too soon and emigrating. Who is looking after our doctors? I come to this place as a surgeon. I am one of the very few surgeons ever elected to Parliament.

My dad was an RAF medic, who served in Aden in world war two before joining the newly invented NHS in 1948. He became a consultant physician in Teesside, where I grew up, and then a professor of geriatric medicine in Melbourne. He wrote an excellent account of his life called “New Ideas for Old Concerns”, which is full of fascinating accounts of his medical experiences during the war and later in the new NHS. It was a time of such hope and optimism, and I sincerely wish that we will be able to recreate that hope today.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I spoke to the hon. Gentleman beforehand about bringing up an issue that I think is important. I commend him on securing this debate, as the welfare of doctors is so important. He will be aware that GPs in Northern Ireland pay the highest indemnity costs in the United Kingdom, and that adds to the primary workforce pressures. The Medical Defence Union is working with the Government in Northern Ireland to find a long-term solution. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that support would help the Northern Ireland Executive to address this issue and get our GPs and doctors in Northern Ireland on par with those here?

[Peter Prinsley]

I will speak of general practice shortly. My son is an A&E doctor here in London, and I am therefore one of three generations of doctors who have served the NHS continuously since it began; the welfare of doctors is personal for me. This Government have already done much for doctors, who are on the frontline and not the picket line for the first time in several years, but burnout, fatigue and stress are still very real problems that threaten to undermine the efficacy of our NHS.

Today’s new doctors graduate into the profession with debts of nearly £100,000. They immediately enter a lottery to be appointed to their first jobs as pre-registration doctors, sometimes ending up miles away from family and friends in places they have never visited before. Now that reminds me of another job that I just started. Young doctors are left immediately responsible for life-and-death decisions, sometimes with insufficient support. They are left scrabbling at the very last minute for somewhere to live—the on-call accommodation that my generation remembers has disappeared—and I have known several of them to sleep in their cars.

It has not escaped my notice that the new name for junior doctors is “resident doctors”. Resident doctors? That is the very last thing they are. If they are lucky, there is a place for them to rest, but many a time I have arrived to find a young doctor fast asleep from exhaustion at an office desk.