§ Mr. FearnTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make it his policy that additional junior doctors will be employed and funds provided for this purpose to ensure that there are no closures of acute hospital services, solely as a result of the initiative to reduce the number of hours worked by junior doctors.
§ Mr. NewtonOur objective, which has been endorsed by the leaders of the medical profession, is to eliminate regular rota commitments requiring junior hospital doctors to be on duty on average for more than one night and one weekend in three wherever resources and the needs of patients permit. We believe it is preferable for health authorities to devote the increased resources available to them to the expansion of the consultant grade and to the development of new patterns of medical staffing which are less heavily reliant on practitioners in the training grades.