Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 November 2021
Sandesh Gulhane’s motion asks us to remove the controlled intake cap on funded training places for students from Scotland studying for front-line NHS roles. I can understand why that might seem a laudable aim, but I fear that the unintended adverse consequences have not been thought out clearly. I will speak to some of those shortly.
We have a controlled intake for medicine for very good reasons, which I will also set out shortly.
Last week, I received advance sight of a soon-to-be published report by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. Although the report talks of the need to grow Scotland-domiciled and widening access student places as part of a planned approach to expansion—something that we agree on—it makes no mention of removing the cap. Our planned expansion will maintain our commitment to widening access and Scotland-domiciled student places. I will come back to that point, which I wanted to make when I tried to intervene on Dr Gulhane and he could not take the intervention.
The Conservatives seem to be attempting to fix a problem that does not exist. Last year and this year, every single Scotland-domiciled student—even those who had requested a deferral or appeal in 2020—who met the conditions of their offer at a Scottish university was offered a place, and we have approximately 6,000 students studying medicine in Scotland.
We would not have known from listening to the Conservatives and Dr Gulhane that, since we took power, there has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of NHS staff, a more than 11 per cent increase in the number of qualified nurses and midwives, nine consecutive years of growth in the number of NHS staff and an almost 60 per cent increase in medical and dental consultants.