Doctors and nurses who get training through the NHS and then leave to work abroad or in private healthcare should be made to pay back some of the costs, a Conservative former minister has suggested. Sir Christopher Chope told the Commons that medical professionals should have to pay "back their dues" if they leave the NHS shortly after receiving training, as a means of encouraging staff to stay within the service.
Christchurch MP Sir Christopher told the Commons: "Many people have made the point as well that we are training nurses and doctors at great public expense and then they are leaving the profession, leaving the National Health Service, before in a sense they have paid back their dues. Again, there is a big contrast between what happens here and what happens in the United States.
"I am not saying it should be made conditional upon getting help with your development as a professional and going to university that when you graduate you must be forced to work for a particular employer or the NHS. But if you are going to not work for the NHS then I think you should have a system similar to what they have in the United States where you are expected to pay back some of the costs of that training."
Labour MP Alex Cunningham meanwhile shared a story of a private healthcare provider in his Stockton North constituency which is currently recruiting medical staff straight from university, to the loss of the local NHS.
Labour MP Mr Cunningham told MPs: "I actually visited a private health provider in my constituency within the last fortnight and they were telling me that they are recruiting people directly from university, people that are being trained at the cost of the state and then being used for private profit. They are picking these people up and it means that the health service, who can't afford to pay the wages they do, actually loses out."
Responding to Mr Cunningham, Labour MP for Jarrow Kate Osborne warned against suggestions from the Conservative benches of "moving on to an Americanised healthcare system".
Ms Osborne added: "It is undeniable to most of us that the NHS is in crisis and it is being pushed into an avoidable and unprecedented collapse after 13 years of Conservative mismanagement."
