NHS Long-term Workforce Plan

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is contributing remotely.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, while this NHS plan is welcome, can the Minister say whether this Government will undertake to commit to the plan and, crucially, to its funding and not change the number of education and training places, as happened last year and in too many previous years, causing chaos in planning for doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals? On hospital training places for junior doctors after they have finished their medical school courses, last year 790 medical graduates could not begin their junior doctor in-hospital training because the NHS did not have enough placements. Given that university medical school places are already capped and highly competitive, this is a complete waste of newly qualified medical graduates.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

It is absolutely a pipeline; some people might say, “Why are you not doing more earlier in this plan?”, but, as the noble Baroness says, there is no point training a lot of people at the university end if you do not have junior doctor places later in the system. That is why we are trying to get a sensible ramp-up so that we can build capacity into those places, recognising the point that the noble Baroness makes. On the numbers in the plan, we have set down £2.4 billion for the first five years of training and development, but the point about it being a live plan is that we will update it every two years. Given the data—this is an NHS document, not a Department of Health one—I would expect those numbers to change, as I would be amazed if we got it spot on first time. The whole point about making this an NHS living document that we can use and which updates is that we can all stick to the plan.