Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill

Danny Beales Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for the Bill, which delivers on the promises made previously in this place in response to the proposed industrial action a couple of months ago. It is welcome to see the pace with which the Government have moved in progressing these important changes. It shows their commitment to backing doctors and medical professionals in this country.

There is a lot to welcome in the Bill’s provisions. Members have talked at length and with a lot of personal and professional expertise about the challenges of the medical training system. As a member of the Health Committee—alongside the Chair, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), and others who have spoken—we often hear about the need for a proper workforce plan to address the NHS’s long-term issues with training and development, which frankly have failed staff and patients.

It is important to reflect on, as others have, the important and vital contribution that doctors and nurses from around the world have made. That is the case in my constituency at Hillingdon hospital, and in GP and community-based health services. My mum recently had a stroke and, fortunately, recovered from it at University College London hospital in central London. As ever, it was doctors, nurses, speech therapists and allied healthcare professionals from almost every country around the world who helped and supported her to recover. I am sure that they will continue to serve our national health service with dedication and commitment, and I am sure that the whole of this House is thankful for their service.

As we have heard, however, it is absurd that thousands of British doctors trained by our NHS at great expense, funded by the British taxpayer, are currently unable to find jobs in the NHS after graduation. In a time of crisis for the NHS, we do not have a penny to spare, and every pound needs to go even further. It is a great waste of talent and capacity, and it is not fair to young doctors in the system, who are being beaten to entry-level NHS positions by doctors from overseas with decades of experience.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I wonder if the hon. Member has given any thought to residents such as George and Dennis in my constituency, who are both British citizens, brought up here, but went to work abroad either because they are dual citizens and wanted to be able to learn in two languages, or because of the covid delays. They will not be included in these measures. Does the hon. Member think they should be included within the second tier of graduates from places like Iceland and Liechtenstein? Does he have any views on whether we should be excluding British citizens?

[Danny Beales]

I am about to turn to a specific issue about British citizens, so I hope I will pick up on the hon. Member’s points. More generally, there is nothing progressive about a system that promotes a brain drain from some of the most deprived and underdeveloped communities in the world, with significant health needs. To have doctors and nurses come from those systems on an industrial scale, and to take away the resources spent in those systems on education and training for our benefit in a western, developed country, is not progressive. It is important to welcome the provisions in the Bill that address those challenges.

As the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) raised, I will press the Secretary of State—and the Minister for Secondary Care, who is now in place—on the specific language of the Bill, which seeks to prioritise graduates from medical schools in the United Kingdom, rather than UK citizens who are medical graduates.

Like other Members, I have been contacted by a number of my constituents who will be affected by these provisions. That includes Alisha, a British citizen who was schooled and grew up here; her family live in Ickenham in my constituency, and she is a first-year medical student at Queen Mary University of London’s campus in Malta, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) mentioned earlier. When she enrolled last year, she was given a guarantee by the university that she would face no disadvantage compared with students on the London campus.

We have heard that there can never be any guarantees; that there is not a legal contract that this Government make with individuals; and that this House is sovereign, and can make different decisions. But I think there are issues of fairness around the retrospective applications of decisions that we make that can affect people’s lives, particularly at crucial points, such as when studying or getting a job—decisions that have major impacts on someone’s future life chances.

Alisha studies a British curriculum and she will be awarded the same degree qualification as her peers on the London campus. However, if the Bill’s current wording is interpreted strictly geographically instead of institutionally, it would mean that she is categorised as an international medical graduate, despite being a British citizen, studying a British medical degree at a British university.

I ask the Secretary of State to take away this point and, with officials, to look at this specific issue in greater detail and at modelling and sharing the number of UK citizens projected to be affected this academic year by those changes. If, as has been suggested by Queen Mary University, this is a matter of 40 or 50 individuals, I ask the Secretary of State to look at whether further changes could be made to ameliorate the impact on UK citizens, at least in a transitional way, that would not bind us in future academic years. I also ask that officials have discussions with Maltese counterparts about our important and ongoing strategic relationship in health and other key areas.

To conclude, there is much to welcome in this Bill. I know that medical colleges and societies strongly support many of the provisions. I hope that they will be the start of a broader process of a comprehensive workforce plan that will address the many challenges in workforce planning, training and development and the numbers of bottlenecks that exist throughout the workforce system so that we have a training and development system for medical professionals in this country that delivers both positive results for patients and better and fairer outcomes for those applying to study, learn and train.