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RCGP chair says Government can’t force doctors to work four years in the NHS

Exclusive The chair of the RCGP has argued that the Government’s new policy of tying trained doctors to the NHS for four years will not happen because it ‘can’t be enforced’.

But, speaking to Pulse at the RCGP conference, Dr Maureen Baker warned that his policy might still ‘put potential graduates off studying medicine’.

Dr Baker argued that ‘If doctors did leave, you’d want people to come back’, so ‘you couldn’t criminalise’ doctors leaving the NHS.

‘What are you going to do, take their passports off them for four years?’ she added.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced that he intends to keep doctods in the NHS for four years after their training in a bid to make NHS ‘self-sufficient’ for doctor recruitment.

In the speech, made earlier this week at the Conservative Party conference, Mr Hunt also said he wanted the NHS to be less reliant on doctors trained overseas, by training 1,500 more ‘homegrown’ doctors every year.

View the full video with Dr Maureen Baker below