Lord Patel
Main Page: Lord Patel (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
The noble Lord raises an important point about the number of doctors, but I fear I am repeating myself. The Government have laid out in their long-term NHS workforce plan that we will have a significant increase in the number of doctors—from 7,500 each year, in five new medical schools. So that may have been the case in the past, but it will not be in the future through to 2030-31.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, the training of doctors requires expansion of resources in pre-clinical years and particularly clinical years. It also requires expansion of foundation year one and the useless foundation year two, which are clinical years in which they train in hospitals and GP practices. What are the Government doing to finance both the clinical years and the foundations years?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
One of the reasons why we cannot accelerate the training of doctors in GP practices, for example, is capacity. That is why the Government have funded five new training hospitals. The noble Lord is absolutely right, but it is about capacity and that is why we are ramping it up, and it will increase in time as outlined in my initial Answer.