@Tigerbalmshark
My view, with a DD who is at F3 stage, is a part of the NHS outside London are now so stretched that the damage is probably permanent. Even if the money were available, the lack of career path, the loss of expertise, structure and comradery means that it would be very difficult to rebuild.
You say that pay is the same across the country. It is not. Health is devolved. Contracts and working hours are also different. However decisions on who is awarded a training number are centralised, and a couple of years ago, for equality reasons, F1 placements were no longer based on merit (points) but on a mix of preference and random allocation, meaning a computer would decide whether you ended up on a tougher contract with lower pay or were awarded the luxury of a London teaching hospital with good access to research and time to study. Being allocated a training number is largely based on exam performance and add-ons such as research and competitions. Actual job performance does not come into it.
DD has done well. After a major wobble when it became clear that she would struggle to progress, even work, in the UK she is now certain medicine is her vocation. She is not in England so her F1/F2 were under the old contract. Lower pay, longer hours and no personal development time. Indeed mandatory training had to be done in your own time. In compensation she got loads of good hands-on experience, worked with a very strong cohort and walked away with some very strong references including one from a "big name". Honestly if you had to be treated by an F3 you should be asking for DD or one of her peers.
DD worked with some lovely consultants who were doing their best to keep things together. One department was missing 50% of their registrars and senior registrars (the competition for training numbers is such that those with them can be very picky about where they go, leaving less popular areas with no-one to appoint, and a struggle to retain), so consultants were on call one night in four and the wait for urgent referrals was two years. Not surprisingly consultants are leaving too, and replacement from overseas of consultants new to the NHS can be/is problematic. A couple of departments, without strong consultant leadership were difficult places to work, with comradery already lost. At least one of her F1//F2 options disappeared because the department lost its permission to take newly graduated doctors because they could no longer provide the right training environment.
Virtually no one DD knows got onto training. F1/F2s jobs under the old contract were very demanding and there is very little research to tap into. The exception was a friend who had studied overseas who advised that £20,000 bought you the research credits and competition prizes needed.
And so it goes. Those without training are forced into competing with hundreds of overseas applicants for LE jobs. There is no resident priority so they will go to people with strong post F2 experience, rather than those without. Instead they join a large pool of underemployed locums, struggling to work in medicine let alone gain useful experience, and without the sort of access to patient data that would allow them to do audits or other research, even though the senior colleagues around them would love help.
DD, as a locum, earns half of what the post holder earns, without any of the benefits of secure employment. She is good, her temp contract has been renewed five times, and there is a level of panic about her leaving as it will leave her colleagues very exposed. (She is the first of five locums to last even though she was by far the cheapest and the most junior.) Various of her previous F2 departments would employ her, or her equally qualified peers, in a heartbeat. But the system does not allow them to. She has bought a house and would love to stay in the Deanery and do her training there. But instead at least 7 colleagues are headed for the same hospital in Australia and vacant posts in her Deanery will continue to be filled from overseas. (All of the SHOs in an adjacent speciality are IMGs, from all over and most on short term of locum contracts. Essentially in the same position, with little chance of a permanent post and even less chance of training. It is an understatement to say that morale is low.)
Things are not that bad in London, but the problems are systemic and unless addressed, more of the NHS will be affected. Sadly by then DD and her friends will be lo0ng gone and people like Ops DD will have decided not to consider medicine as a career.