Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLiz Kendall
Main Page: Liz Kendall (Labour - Leicester West)Department Debates - View all Liz Kendall's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberBursaries are already available to medical students to encourage recruitment to the medical profession. As for the specific question of A and E recruitment, at the end of last year I published—alongside the report from the Doctors and Dentists Review Body on the consultant contracts and clinical excellence awards—a report on junior doctors in training. That has given us an excellent opportunity to consider what rewards and inducements may be available to encourage junior doctors to move into A and E and other specialties in which the work is particularly intensive and the meeting of staffing requirements has posed a long-standing challenge.
The Government say that the number of doctors in the NHS has increased by 5,000 since they came to power. When did those doctors start their training?
We know that it takes five or sometimes six years for doctors to complete their medical training. The key difference is that under the plans left by the last Government not all doctors were guaranteed places of work in the NHS after completing their training, whereas the present Government are ensuring that they find NHS jobs. That is why we have 5,000 more doctors in the NHS. The same applies to midwives: under the last Government they were not finding places after completing their training, but under this Government they are, and there are 800 more of them.