Business of the House

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I do not in the least feel under any kind of duress in respect of the allocation of time. I just need to remind Members from time to time that the House has resolved that a substantial part of its time—something approaching half the total number of sitting days—is made available to the Backbench Business Committee, to the Opposition, to the Liaison Committee—[Interruption.] We have to secure the business of government. From my point of view, it is absolutely transparent that a House business committee should add value to the measures that have made progress in this Parliament in giving Back Benchers access to parliamentary time, rather than detracting from them.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

In connection with this question, I remind the House that my daughter is a practising medical student.

Final-year medical students face uncertainty this week over their foundation programme jobs because of application scoring errors in the new SJT—situational judgment test. This week, more than 7,000 final-year medical students who were initially delighted to receive their foundation school allocations may be concerned that those allocated jobs are now at risk. Students were informed of this by e-mail at 6.30 on Tuesday, with no apology for the error, causing some distress and anxiety. That is completely unacceptable. Will the Leader of the House request a statement from the Secretary of State?

[Mr Lansley]

The UK Foundation Programme Office is working urgently to resolve these problems so that there is minimum disruption to doctors and the affected hospitals, and to ensure that everyone is notified as quickly as possible about their placements for August. The error should not have happened and we are concerned about the anxiety that this has caused to students. I reiterate—and I recall making this clear when I was the Secretary of State for Health—that all eligible graduates of a UK medical school will receive a training place for August 2013.