B

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 15 December 2025

Debate

Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Contribution

My Lords, will the Minister respond to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven: are these genuinely new training places? I put this question last week and did not really get an answer. I understand that resident doctors are concerned about the inability to plan ahead for training places, and want to have a place that will last for up to a year or longer. They are at the age where they want to put down roots and probably marry and have a family, but because of the way training is organised, that is not possible. Furthermore, I am not quite sure if it was a 29% or 30% pay increase in any one year, but whatever it was, I understand that this still leaves resident doctors with an under-pay performance of less than 17% compared to 2009. They are being paid less than a train driver, a tube driver or even an Uber driver. I believe we owe them the respect they deserve. My father and brother had to work every Christmas or new year. In my father’s time it was every other night and weekend on call. We have come a long way since then, but we need to give the British-born doctors who want to train a priority in the system which is not being shown to them at the moment.

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