Baroness Merron (Lab)

My noble friend rightly refers, as I did earlier, to the training bottleneck. The Secretary of State was glad to acknowledge the need to tackle training. While he felt that there was no point on pay to be accepted, he certainly felt that the BMA resident doctors committee had a good point on jobs. To be honest, that is why it is so disappointing to be where we are today. I will pass on my noble friend’s generous comments to the Secretary of State. He offered to introduce emergency legislation in the new year to prioritise UK medical graduates and other doctors with significant experience of working in the NHS in speciality training posts. That would have made a huge difference, but it has been rejected. He also offered to increase the number of training posts over the next three years, from the 1,000 that was originally announced to 4,000, bringing forward 1,000 of those training posts to start next year—that would have made a huge difference. I could go on, but I have made my point. I agree with my noble friend’s point about acknowledging the role of nurses. In fact, if my noble friend will allow me, I will go further: we are talking about the whole healthcare team. That is another point to the issue on pay: while the BMA doctors committee continues to press for a pay deal far in excess of anything that anyone else is getting, the impact across the NHS, both on staff and on services, continues to be under threat—and we cannot allow that.