DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Train more doctors or crisis will never end
Just when you thought the crisis in primary healthcare couldn’t get any worse – it has.
New figures show the ratio of GPs to patients is now the highest on record. In some areas family doctors have up to 3,000 on their books. Is it any wonder it often takes weeks to get an appointment?
There are many reasons for this dire situation. More GPs retiring early, working part time or doing fewer hours. A population which is older, more overweight and much larger in numbers because of mass immigration.
And, crucially, our abject failure to train more doctors. Every year thousands of young people make the academic grades necessary to study medicine at universities and hospitals, yet are turned away.
The Government stubbornly refuses to expand the number of places available on the grounds of cost (it takes about £250,000 to train a doctor) and lack of capacity.
But if the primary care system is to be saved from collapse, we must have more home-grown GPs. It may not be the full solution, but it is surely part of it.
The current cap is self-defeating. It must be lifted.
New figures show the ratio of GPs to patients is now the highest on record. In some areas family doctors have up to 3,000 on their books
But if the primary care system is to be saved from collapse, we must have more home-grown GPs
Embrace Brexit, PM
Nothing to see here. Just routine. What’s the fuss? This was the message from organisers of the ‘secret’ Ditchley Park summit on how to fix the ‘failings’ of Brexit.
Described as a cross-party event, it was in fact organised by Remainers for Remainers to advance the Remainer cause – despite the attendance of arch political schemer and prominent Leaver Michael Gove.
Most of those present would dearly love to see Brexit unravel and the UK drift back towards Brussels. And they believe stunts like this will further that aim.
In response to former chief Brexit negotiator Lord Frost’s plea to speak up for the democratic majority against this latest manoeuvre, Rishi Sunak pledged yesterday to ‘seize the opportunity’ of our EU withdrawal and ‘do things differently’.
So when will he start? Racking up corporation tax by six percentage points at a stroke, cutting incentives for new research and investment, and failing to slash stultifying red tape are not seizing opportunity, they are crushing it.
As Lord Frost pointed out, the way to ‘fix’ Brexit is for the Tories to use their election mandate and embrace its advantages – not allow it to suffer death by a thousand Remainer cuts.
Rishi Sunak pledged yesterday to ‘seize the opportunity’ of our EU withdrawal and ‘do things differently’. So when will he start?
Shunning the office
More than a quarter of adults still work from home for at least part of the week – twice as many as before the pandemic. A further 16 per cent no longer go to the workplace at all. In London, just four in ten do a full week at the office.
This retreat into domesticity has far-reaching consequences. Younger employees in particular lose the proximity to more experienced colleagues that is essential for their career development.
Teamwork and esprit de corps are inevitably diminished and while a majority of employees claim to be just as productive at home, employers disagree. CBI director-general Tony Danker says most bosses want everyone back in the office but are meeting stiff resistance.
Too many workers now assume working from home to be a right rather than the privilege it ought to be.
For the UK to emerge from the downturn and return to growth, it needs the economy to be firing on all cylinders – not idling along in the slow lane. Working from home may seem a comfortable option now, but it could ultimately lead to a radical rethink by employers.
Why pay staff a full salary when they can’t even be bothered to come in?
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