Health Workers: Training

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Crisp]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to increase the number of training places for doctors, nurses and other health workers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, on 4 October the Health Secretary announced that from September 2018, the Government will fund up to 1,500 additional undergraduate medical places each year. Reforms to the funding of nursing, midwifery and allied health preregistration training will come into effect on 1 August 2017. The reforms will enable universities to offer up to 10,000 additional training places by the end of this Parliament.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer and welcome him to what I think is his first parliamentary Question. I am sure that the Government recognise that there is a growing shortage of health workers globally that comes about as countries, particularly in Asia, expand their workforce enormously. There is a global market and global competition for health professionals. The UK was going to be affected by it regardless of Brexit, but the uncertainties of Brexit make it worse. First, what assessment have the Government made of the scale of the risks from those two factors? Secondly, what assessment have they made of the opportunities? The UK is a world leader in the education of health professionals. What are the Government doing to help universities and others take the opportunity to train more health workers both here and abroad to meet both the UK’s and the world’s demand for increased numbers?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I thank the noble Lord for his welcome. The WHO has identified a global shortage of medical staff of more than 2 million, so clearly there is a big need and, as he says, it is being driven by the development of countries, particularly those with large populations, and the need to grow their own staff. At the moment, about 25% of NHS staff in the UK come from abroad and, like all NHS staff, they do a fantastic job for us. Clearly, given the problem that the noble Lord identified, we will need to become less reliant on overseas staff, which is one reason driving our desire to increase the number of training places for doctors, nurses, midwives and others.

In answer to the second part of his question, I think something like 10 of the world’s top universities are based in the UK. We are a world leader in education; that is a great strength of ours and something that we want to continue. Healthcare UK is the government body responsible for working with universities to unlock partnerships with other countries, and there have been a number of successful examples of where that has happened.