Hunt plan to tie new doctors to health service gets sidelined

JEREMY HUNT has stepped back from a pledge to force graduate doctors to work for the NHS for four years.

The policy was absent from a widescale announcement on the future of medical training published yesterday by the Department of Health, after practitioners warned it might “exacerbate” the workforce crisis.

Last year the Health Secretary promised the Conservative Party Conference that all doctors whose graduate training was paid for by the NHS would have to work for the health service for at least four years. But the Department of Health yesterday pledged merely to “continue exploring how best to achieve a return on taxpayer investment”, offering no date to revisit the four-year pledge.

The apparent climbdown comes after doctors’ groups vociferously opposed a mandatory four-year NHS tie.

The British Medical Association argued that “taxpayers get a significant return on their investment from the dedicated service provided by all doctors over the course of their career”.

The union added that such a policy would discourage students from poorer backgrounds from becoming doctors, and was “potentially discriminatory to women who are more likely to take a career break”.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “We will continue exploring how best to achieve a return on taxpayer investment in training medical students and it is inaccurate to say that we are scrapping plans set out by the Health Secretary last year.”