Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:47 pm on 13 December 2017.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:47, 13 December 2017

This Government has never tried to put a halt on young people from Wales having opportunities in Wales to study medicine. Our challenge has been something for something with our medical schools and our capacity to do so. So, we already have a slight increase in the number of Welsh domiciled students acquiring places in both Cardiff and Swansea. I've been clear, as indeed has the Cabinet Secretary for Education, that if we're going to invest more in training doctors here in Wales, then we need to see a greater return in terms of Welsh domiciled students. We also need to be better, frankly, at reacquiring young people from Wales who go to study medicine in different parts of the UK. I would not criticise a young person from Anglesey, Cardiff, St Davids or Newtown who decided they wanted to study medicine in Liverpool, Manchester, London or somewhere else. Our challenge is how we actually persuade those people to come back to Wales to undertake national health service work on a longer-term basis.

We're actually seeing some success in having more people, particularly with 'Train. Work. Live.', choosing, after undertaking some of their career within England, to actually come back to Wales as well. So, as ever, there is not one simple answer. There is a range of different things that we need to get right to have the best prospect of having the greatest number of Welsh domiciled students undertaking medical education and training here within Wales, as well as reacquiring people from Wales who have undertaken their medical education training in other parts of the UK in particular.