#GPnews: Honour £350m-a-week-for-NHS Brexit promise, says Stevens

15:50 The BMA has elected a new Welsh Junior Doctors Committee chair.

Dr Josie Cheetham, a trainee in acute care common stem (anaesthetics) in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, has replaced Dr Bethan Roberts, who stood down having qualified as a GP earlier this year.

Dr Cheetham said: ‘I am delighted to have won the support of my colleagues and to have been elected chair of WJDC. I would like to thank Bethan for all her hard work as chair, and wish her the very best for the future. 

‘Trainees are of key value to the NHS workforce and deserve respect and recognition. But above all, trainees deserve quality training and I intend to ensure that the training laid out in educational contracts is delivered.

‘I am really excited about this opportunity and hope to contribute to improving the working lives of my fellow junior doctors in Wales. I’m sure it will be a steep learning curve, and I hope that I am able to be the chair the committee, and the wider community of junior doctors, deserve.’

12:25 Also speaking at the NHS Providers conference was health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who said there would be a robust and coherent NHS workforce plan forthcoming.

NHS Employers chief executive Danny Mortimer said: ‘Employers across the NHS will welcome the news that there will be a strategy in place to make clear how the NHS will collectively address the future supply, retention and development of its workforce.

‘This is an opportunity to set out how actions to date will help employers in the short, medium and longer term, as well as be clear on what further actions will need to be taken at every level of the NHS and across government.’

His words come as the Government recently took a new approach to its pledge to boost GP numbers by 5,000 in England between 2015 and 2020, by giving regional NHS leaders targets for how many they must each recruit.

The Government also recently launched a £100m international GP recruitment scheme, and has admitted that up to two thirds of the extra 5,000 GPs promised by 2020 could come from overseas.

11:00 BMA chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul has responded to Mr Stevens’ call, saying people ‘rightly expect’ the extra NHS funding.

He said: ‘The promise of extra funding for the NHS was a key issue at the ballot box during the Brexit referendum, and people rightly expect that promise to be honoured.

‘With the budget only weeks away, bold action to deliver on this pledge, as proposed by Simon Stevens, is urgently needed and has the backing of the BMA. This is vital in order to address the current crisis in our health service, protect and improve patient care and put the NHS on a sustainable footing for the future.’

09:55 The time has come to make good on the suggestion from the Vote Leave campaign that Brexit would see an extra £350m a week spent on the health service, NHS boss Simon Stevens is to say today.

As the BBC, reports, Mr Stevens will tell the NHS Providers conference in Birmingham: ‘The NHS wasn’t on the ballot paper, but it was on the Battle Bus. Vote Leave for a better funded health service – £350m a week.

‘Rather than our criticising these clear Brexit funding commitments to NHS patients – promises entered into by cabinet ministers and by MPs – the public want to see them honoured.’