Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)

My Lords, I repeat my declarations of interest from Second Reading as chair of King’s College London and chair of Cancer Research UK, and as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of General Practitioners. I am going to speak to my Amendments 9, 11, 24 and 25. I am most grateful to my co-signatories: the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lords, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley and Lord Patel. The Government, in my opinion rightly, want to prioritise for specialty training doctors who, among other things, have significant prior experience working in the NHS. They propose in the Bill that that would be an explicit criterion to be taken into account from 2027. So the principle is clear. The practice for 2026, however, is said in the impact assessment to be such that they cannot use that criterion for the current cycle. So, instead, a series of proxies are proposed which, in the words of the impact assessment, would “capture applicants who we believe are most likely to have NHS experience”. This set of amendments, which should be an easy pill for the Government to swallow, would simply give them the ability to apply in 2026 the same criterion relative to work experience in the NHS that they propose from 2027 onwards. I recognise that there may still be some discussions, as we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, about the executability of that criterion, using the Oriel system or other mechanisms. These amendments would not require the Government to bring forward their 2027 approach but simply permit them to do so if, in the weeks between now and 5 March, for example, if that is the deadline for when Royal Assent is required, it becomes clear to them that the modest enabling work on the computer software, estimated at £100,000, can be put in place if that were needed.