Opposition day
Before the commencement of proceedings in parliament & after the mass lobby, shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley, Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb and Labour backbench MP Ian Gibson all spoke to doctors gathered outside Parliament for a rally organised by doctors’ organisation Remedy UK.
Matt Jamison-Evans, of Remedy UK, the organization fighting for a better deal for young doctors, added: “Junior doctors want to be moving forward with their skills.
“People will either leave the profession, or will leave the country and get training somewhere else.”
Addressing the rally in Westminster, shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley told the doctors that ministers should designate more specialist training posts to bridge the gap between the number of applications and the smaller number of training posts available.
He said: “Junior doctors have been systematically undermined by this Government’s failure to implement an open, fair and effective selection process for training posts.
“Patients will ultimately lose out as some of our most talented and skilled doctors are forced to seek opportunities overseas and out of the profession altogether.
“Unless strategic solutions are provided as a matter of urgency, the future of NHS care is at stake. I will be pressing the Government on this issue again today in Parliament.”
Mr Lansley said of Miss Hewitt: “She came last month to apologise but actually in my book if you apologise in the way she did it ought to be because you recognise what happened and you regret it happening. But she does not seem to regret it at all, she wants to carry on in the same way.”
Mr Lamb told doctors he had worked as an employment lawyer before working in the Commons. “When I looked at what was happening, I saw it was flawed, fatally flawed,” he said. “There’s no doubt that the action the Government should have taken was to suspend the process as soon as it became clear what the scale of the crisis really was. There’s an old proverb that if you are in a hole ’stop digging’. The Government has not learned this lesson.”
Dr Gibson told junior doctors at the rally that MPs lived in a “crazy kind of world” and do not “know what a job is”. He added: “No-one can justify what’s happening to you. It’s no use apologising anymore. We have had apologies. The boldest thing to do in this situation is to scrap what happens and start again.”
Watching the proceedings in parliament reminds me why I find so many of the current lot so smarmy. “Everything is working well” we are told.
Clueless, incompetent & disingenuous. Patricia Hewitt is using the Review Group to provide cover for everything they have done.
Partial transcript as published. Please add your comments.
Numbers: 34000 total applicants. 23000 total posts. 3000 for GP. 19000 total in England. 700 jobs to be added.
Of applicants 16,000 SHO’s. 9000 in non-training posts currently.
Claims not to have known numbers of people who were predicted to apply for training posts. She claims they are doing so because the new system is fairer! Of course we all know that there simply is no information about posts being available from next year for senior trainees.
Norman Lamb - leaves all those involved in a state of some despair. The govt has demonstrated total arrogance & total incompetence. Crockard & Heard get mentioned. Once flawed, always flawed. Supports judicial review.
Listening to a lengthy rambling speech by John Mann from Bassetlaw (Labour). Do we really have people like him representing us in parliament?
I am tired of listening to rubbish & will have to wait for the transcript.
Andy Burnham claims that MTAS was piloted in 2 deaneries & that the application form was based on one from the London Deanery.
Tooke review to publish interim report in September. Prelim findings to be published earlier. Terms of reference below.
The review will examine:
- the extent to which MMC has engaged the medical profession and to make recommendations to ensure that it has the support of the profession in the future
- the extent to which implementation to date has met the needs of doctors in training, patients, the service and employers
- the governance structures across the UK that underpin MMC and the inter-governmental working arrangements of the four home countries
- the implementation processes underlying MMC and the methods used in selection and recruitment
- factors relating to the wider professional, regulatory, workforce and service environment which may have impacted on the programme.
It will also consider specific issues that have been the subject of stakeholder concern, including:
- the extent and quality of stakeholder engagement with the programme
- the effective engagement of doctors in training and the profession as a whole in MMC and the development of a proper understanding of its aims and benefits
- the appropriate relationship between the acquisition of competence and the pursuit of excellence.
- the assessment methodologies used in the selection process including the relative merits of competency-based and more traditional methods of selection and recruitment
- the use of assessment centres in selection and recruitment
- the level of choice on offer at application
- the lack of flexibility available to trainees on run-through programmes
- the role of fixed-term training posts alongside run-through posts
- the relative roles of the Deaneries and the Medical Royal Colleges in delivering components of the programme
- the need for flexibility in implementation across the UK.
Other members of the panel not yet named.
April 25th, 2007 at 10:06 am
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