My understanding is that around 37% of the BMA went to overseas medical schools. Some will be very good, but there is little evidence that the BMA understands the issues around allowing young people to spend 5/6 years at medical school here and then two years as F1/F2 only to face unemployment.
This is not a minority of this cohort. This is the majority. Boris lifted the Resident Market Labour Test and declared all doctor jobs as skill shortage jobs, with the BMA backing him saying it was a brave move.
If/when my daughter is forced to seek work in Australia she will only be eligible for jobs suitably qualified doctors already resident in Australia don't want. So she expects to end up in a mining or agricultural town. She also won't be able to be considered for training until she has lived/worked in Australia for a set number of years. Not so in the UK. She is only aware of two in her Deanery who have got onto any form of specialist training including GP. The positions exist but are, as likely as not, to have gone to those like Dr Ryan who are not from the UK, did not study in the UK and quite possibly have never worked for the NHS. And equally probably, may be intending to work elsewhere when qualified.
They are not the "junior doctors" we think about, working in their first and second jobs, on four months rotations and covering nights and other anti-social shifts. These are Registrars and Senior Registrars undertaking six or so years specialist training with the aim of being consultants. Their pay is fine in most parts of the country including traditionally hard to recruit areas. London, with is excessive living costs, is different. But London is still the first choice of ambitious future consultants who want St Thomas' on their CV when they come to apply for their highly paid job in either a London Private Hospital or in Dubai. Many simply are not prepared to work in areas where the cost of living is lower. We should not be held to ransom. The money should be spent on actions that help sustain the NHS into the longer term.
If Wes wants to sort out the NHS his first step has to be to provide a career path for those happy to work in hard to recruit areas. And to do that he has to give priority to the 20,000 or so doctors who are already in the country and who will be unemployed in August when their F2, or fixed term contracts come to an end. The madness of the tax payer subsidising their education, consultants and others training them on the job, and of them taking our huge student loans for them to end up unemployed is bonkers. We should not be recruiting from overseas for entry level HCP jobs if we have young people already here who are well qualified and capable.