§ Miss McIntoshTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what the total running costs of NHS organisations serving(a) the Vale of York constituency and (b) North Yorkshire were in 1997; and what the total is now. [77835]
§ Jacqui SmithThe information requested is shown in the table:
required. The main impact of these practitioners will be in reducing the need to cover at senior house officer level.
It will be inevitable that the changes needed to achieve EWTD compliance will significantly affect the working patterns of doctors in training and also change the traditional one-to-one relationship between a training grade doctor and their consultant.
The Department is currently undertaking a consultation exercise on the Chief Medical Officer's report Unfinished Business: Proposals for reform of the Senior House Officer grade. The report provides proposals for reform of postgraduate medical training, taking into account that proposed reform would be introduced at the same time as implementation of the EWTD. The report argues that the EWTD and training reform are mutually dependent—the EWTD will require reform in training, which in turn can support implementation of the Directive.
A key proposal in Unfinished Business is that new and shorter higher specialist training programmes should be introduced which would lead to the award of an earlier certificate of completion of specialist training (CCST) for those satisfactorily completing training in the "generalist" elements of a specialty. This would have the effect increasing the flow of trained doctors.
The Department will be working with the Deans and the Royal Colleges to ensure that NHS trusts are supported in delivering training with good advice on training models and as a first step the Conference of 439W Postgraduate Medical Deans (COPMED) has produced a document Liberating Learning. This sets out approaches to providing training in the EWTD context.
§ Mr. NormanTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions his Department has had with representatives of the British Medical Association concerning derogations for junior doctors from the Working Time Directive; and if he will make a statement. [77507]
§ Mr. HuttonThe Department of Health and the health departments of the devolved administrations have, on several occasions over the past year, held discussions with the British Medical Association junior doctors' committee about derogations for junior doctors from the European Working Time Directive (EWTD). Discussions came to a halt in July as the two sides did not reach a collective agreement on derogation. The Government intends to derogate for junior doctors from the EWTD by amending the 1998 Working Time Regulations.