Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill

Debate between Vikki Slade and Danny Beales

2nd reading
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.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Debate between Vikki Slade and Danny Beales

Monday 8th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Danny Beales]

The Bill before us is one of the most important and impactful Bills currently before Parliament. I say that not as someone who has seen a few emails in my inbox, but as someone who has felt the impact of the sector, having experienced homelessness twice in my teenage years and having been evicted through a section 21 eviction. As a renter as an adult for many years in London, I know the worry that many go through when pushing for simple repairs to be made or for mould to be addressed, fearing that ultimately their reward for asserting their legal rights will be a section 21 eviction.

The private rented sector in this country is unbalanced and insecure, and the rights of tenants are far outweighed by the powers of the landlord in our legal system. Like many in this place, I am aware of countless cases of constituents who have experienced section 21 evictions and poor treatment right across the sector—treatment that the Bill will go a significant way to remedying. That is why I hope Members will support the Government in opposing the Lords amendments, which seek to weaken, neuter and undermine key provisions of the Bill. Specifically, I want to mention Lords amendments 26, 27, 11 and 18; I am pleased that the Minister has outlined that the Government will oppose them.

Lords amendments 26 and 27 would require local authorities to meet a criminal standard of proof to impose financial penalties for discrimination and rental bidding. That seems completely inappropriate for the offences, with a relatively small maximum penalty of £7,000. That is also completely out of kilter with other provisions that local authorities would enforce to a similar civil standard. It would be incredibly hard to meet that burden of proof for many of those offences. How would a tenant prove beyond reasonable doubt that, for instance, they had been discriminated against for being on benefits? Anyone in that situation would know quite clearly that that is incredibly difficult—if not impossible—to do. Clearly, the amendment would neuter the provisions of the Bill. Local authorities have incredibly limited resources, particularly for enforcement action, and such a high bar would be likely to deter them from pursuing those offences further.

Lords amendment 11, which would allow a landlord to require a pet deposit of up to three weeks’ rent as a condition of consenting to a tenant keeping a pet in their property, is again disproportionate. First, it would hit the poorest hardest. I am pleased that the Opposition spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), has pets and has no problem with such a provision, but many people not on a parliamentary salary would struggle to pay three weeks’ extra deposit on top of the five weeks’ deposit already in place. The Minister mentioned an average cost of £900. In a constituency like mine in London, the cost would be even more than £900; for a rented three or four-bed family home, it would probably be several thousand pounds. That is a completely disproportionate charge for simply having a cat or dog at home.

Secondly, there is no evidence that such a pet deposit is required to protect a property. Recent research by the University of Hull found that three quarters of pet-owning tenancies result in absolutely no claim against the existing deposit levels, so I would argue that the five-week deposit is more than adequate to support pet-owning households. In fact, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home found that owning a pet increased the length of time someone stayed in a tenancy and reduced tenant turnover, benefiting the landlord financially, not harming them.

I am also significantly opposed to Lords amendment 18, which would reduce the period for which landlords could not re-let their property from 12 months to six months after they had evicted a tenant on the basis that they intended to sell their property. My concern is that this six-month reduction is not sufficient time to meaningfully disincentivise landlords from gaming the system and would reintroduce section 21 through the back door.

Take the London market, for instance, where average rents have increased by 32% over the last five years—the successful sector that Opposition Members have highlighted. Six months is not long enough to dissuade a landlord from benefiting from that sort of rental increase over short periods of time. The inconvenience that a 12-month time period would cause to a well-meaning landlord who is struggling to sell is relatively minor compared with the potential harm caused to the many tenants who would be affected by such a loophole.

In conclusion, houses are homes, not just investments. This Bill was written to rebalance the relationship between the landlord and the tenant in the tenant’s favour, fixing a decades-long power imbalance that has deprioritised the rights of tenants to a safe, stable and affordable home. All the amendments have in common a shared motive to shift the balance back towards landlords to weaken this landmark legislation. That would save some good landlords a small inconvenience, but it would be at the expense of the rights and protections afforded to each and every tenant. That is not reasonable or justifiable, and that is why I will vote against the amendments. I hope that others will do the same and give renters the rights and security they deserve.

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

Renters have waited long enough: this Bill is overdue, and it is time to deliver. The Conservatives had their chance. They promised reform, then watered it down. The Renters (Reform) Bill gathered dust while tenants were left to suffer, so Liberal Democrats absolutely welcome this Government’s Renters’ Rights Bill. But let us be clear: this Bill must hold firm in protecting the rights of tenants. My inbox is overflowing with experiences that should shame us all: families sleeping on the floor, windows that whistle in the wind, homes riddled with damp and mould, and tenants harassed by landlords to intimidate them out of their homes. This is not just about comfort and health; it is about dignity, justice and fairness.

Energy efficiency must be front and centre. Too many renters are living in homes that make them sick and are paying through the nose to heat them. Fuel poverty is a national scandal, and the Bill has a role to play in ending that. While the spotlight is on private renters, we must not forget those in social housing or in homes owned by institutions. They deserve the same rights, protections and standards.

I want to talk to Lords amendment 39 and Ministry of Defence housing. It is outrageous that the families of those who serve and who risk their lives for us are denied the legal protection that others will enjoy. These families are often uprooted, isolated and left behind while loved ones serve abroad or at sea. Yet they are told that they do not qualify for the same decent housing standards as everyone else. I have met families and service personnel around the country and even around the world through the armed forces parliamentary scheme, and one of the issues most frequently cited by those thinking of leaving the armed forces is their housing. Too many of their homes are below par.

The Government say that most MOD homes already meet the standard—fine, then what is the harm in giving these families the legal right to decent housing? If the homes are good, the law will confirm it. If they are not, that is why we need the law. Let us be honest: many tenants, whether in military housing, Church estates or country manors, are afraid to speak out. They are afraid to challenge their landlord and lose their home. Rights must be for everyone, accessible without fear or favour.

The Government claim that councils cannot access the homes for security reasons, but I am sure the Minister will know, as do those of us who have military homes in our areas, that most family homes are not behind the wire. For those that are, there are solutions. We must find a solution and ensure that these families have the same rights. No one should be denied decent housing because of who they work for. I want to address the attempts to water down the Bill.