Dr Peter Prinsley
MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am confused by the Opposition referring in their new clause to a requirement to “make regulations” in this respect, as the private sector is already widely used to reduce waiting lists where appropriate. However, we must also be aware of the problem we have with overuse of private facilities.”
“I wonder whether the hon. Member’s experience mirrors mine. Many years ago, it seemed to be easy for general practitioners to ring me up. I often received telephone calls from general practitioners asking for advice about patients.”
“I am listening carefully to what the hon. Member, who is a medical colleague of mine, has to say. Although I think that a fracture liaison service is an excellent idea, there are many, many aspects of medical care that require careful attention, such as the management of people with hearing loss—my own field—or the assessment of people wi…”
“I agree with everything that the Minister has to say—what a surprise—but particularly the fact that when the new Government came in, they did something about these 40 “new” hospitals that were not full hospitals.”
“I am interested in what the hon. Member has to say about strike action. I was involved in trying to get the resident doctors’ strike stopped, but was unsuccessful for many months. I think she is talking about the principle of whether people involved in medical care should ever go on strike.”
“Does the Minister agree that the single most effective thing that we have done for public health since we were elected is to get the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 passed? The gradual abolition of cigarette smoking will save more lives than anything else we could conceivably do in politics.”
The complete record
Every one of 496 lines we hold for Dr Peter Prinsley, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 10.
“There was no compatibility between the records, which meant that transferring care was complicated and hazardous. I would be asked to advise on a patient from another hospital, relying on a dictated note from the referring doctor, but I could not access the clinical records, the results of investigations such as the pathology test, scans or, crucially, the operating records. Consultations were delayed as I stared at creaking computers, with numerous software programmes, each individually protected by ever-changing and forgettable passwords, that slowly booted up. That obviously needs to change. I would link the NHS number to an unique single patient record. I would give ownership of the record to the patient, and let the patient be the custodian and the gatekeeper. That is the truly revolutionary idea.”
“I know of a quite frail diabetic patient with cancer, who underwent several operations as well as complicated chemo in London. He eventually decided that he was well enough to take a short holiday, so he went to Cornwall on the train. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving he was found in a state of collapse by his daughter, and taken to the nearest hospital late on a Saturday night. The doctors had no access to his medical notes, and no answer when they called the hospital in London, so they were puzzled. That situation is familiar to doctors. Patients are incredulous when they are told that we are unable to see all their medical records: “Surely everything is on the computer?” As a surgeon before becoming an MP, I worked in at least three different hospitals.”
“I am grateful for that intervention, and I am aware that in various bits of the country such systems do exist. I would like to see a single patient record that is genuinely single, so that when my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), who is sitting next to me, writes something in the record, I can see it, and when I write in my record, he can see it, and no letters are passing back and forth between us. That is why I am sure that legislating for the mandatory single record is what we must do, and as a surgeon who has worked for 40 years in the NHS, I will do everything I can to help.”
“I thank the Minister for his statement. I declare an interest as a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, but I speak for myself. The actions of Minister Gvir, seen on the news last night, are an utter disgrace. As a Jewish MP, I was ashamed, for sometimes it is not easy to be a Jewish MP in this House. Does the Minister agree that the actions of certain Israeli Ministers are not the responsibility of the Anglo-Jewish population, and that there can be no excuse for the terrible epidemic of antisemitism we have seen on British streets? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]”
“I was interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comment about the shortage of welders. Does he agree that the Government’s plan for construction colleges of excellence, including the one in Bury St Edmunds, will be crucial for the provision of welders?”
“That clearly presents a foreign policy and domestic security issue, and I strongly believe that the Government must tackle it head-on. What can we do to ensure defensive readiness? We must ensure strong election security, strong action against foreign online interference, and robust protection for Jewish communities facing real and sustained threats. My constituents, and communities across the country, rightly expect democracy to be protected and all their neighbours to be safe.”
“Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) and the world’s richest man. The Community Security Trust records antisemitic activity, which is now at record levels. I welcomed the eloquent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) and for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards), neither of whom are now in their seats. Not every antisemitic incident is foreign-directed, but it is clear that hostile foreign actors amplify hatred online and use it to further divide our society. That is why the threat from Iran and the IRGC matters so much. The Security Minister stated that the UK has responded to 20 Iran-backed plots since the start of 2022, presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents.”
“The Rycroft review made clear that this country “faces a persistent problem of foreign interests seeking to exert influence on, and to interfere in, our politics.” That should be of concern to every Member of this House. Our elections are the foundations of our democracy. If hostile states can use online disinformation and covert influence to shape our political debate, they are attacking the public’s right to decide the future of this country freely and fairly. I am proud that this Government are rightly strengthening rules on political finance, including through tighter requirements on company donations and measures aimed at preventing foreign actors from using companies to influence UK politics. Some of that influence is well known, such as the millions of pounds from Thailand and the curious friendship between the hon.”
“I am very grateful to be making a contribution to the debate on the King’s Speech. It touched on what, in my view, is the core foundation of the nation’s future, which is defensive readiness. My remarks will focus on what is a real part of our national defence: the defence of our democracy and our communities from hostile foreign influence. One might be forgiven for thinking that defensive readiness is about the quality of ships, aircraft, cyber-systems and military capabilities, but it is also about whether our elections are secure, whether our public debate is protected, and whether communities in this country can live free from hatred and fear. There is no doubt that foreign interference is a threat.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention and agree that the BBC World Service is almost the best example of our country’s soft power. I welcome the extra investment promised by this Government to support its work, but I would like it to be greater. We will do all we can to support the World Service. The duty to protect democracy is a sacred duty of this House. It is a simple wish, and something I am sure we can all do.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing this debate. I am concerned about the mental health of farmers. There is about one suicide a week among UK farmers. Does he agree that we must do everything we can to support the mental health of our farmers?”
“As we all know, our resident doctors just spent six days on the picket lines; the wards were covered by others, operations were postponed and patients’ appointments were rescheduled. When the strikes ended, as they did just over a week ago, the problems did not go away. That is why I asked for the debate. If we are serious about resetting the relationship between this Government and the medical profession, as I believe we all are, we must begin somewhere, and in my view we should begin where every doctor begins: at the foundations.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Foundation Programme and its role in supporting and retaining resident doctors. Thank you, Mrs Barker, for chairing today’s debate. First, I must thank everyone for coming and say something about my interests. As many know, I am an ear, nose and throat surgeon and I have a son who is a registrar in accident and emergency medicine. I am a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, I have an MD from the University of East Anglia, and my medical school was at Sheffield. This debate is to consider the foundation programme and its role in retaining resident doctors. It is a privilege to introduce the debate, and I am grateful to all the colleagues who have come along this morning.”
“Let me set out what the system does, why it is failing, what we have learned from recent attempts to reform it and what I believe we ought to do instead; but let me first refer to a Royal College of Physicians survey of resident doctors that was done in 2025, which has some interesting findings. Only 44% of the resident doctors stated that they were satisfied with their clinical training. Just 26% of the respondents felt ready to move on to the next step. About 20% of the doctors thought that the recruitment process was fair, which meant that 80% of them thought that it was unfair. About half of them want to work less than full time and, most alarmingly, only 65% of them said that they thought they would be working in the NHS in five years’ time.”
“I heard the same thing; indeed, I met Dr Fletcher from the BMA yesterday myself and heard exactly this story, so the situation is intensely frustrating, but I believe that we can get ourselves back to a position in which an agreement can be reached. My argument this morning is simple. The foundation programme, the first two years of a doctor’s working life, is, in its present form, not supporting and retaining doctors as it should. The problem is that the doctors are treated like numbers on a spreadsheet rather than the people they are, and some of our brightest young doctors, at precisely the moment when they need the most support, are considering leaving the NHS altogether.”
“Certainly we must address the workload but, as I will reveal later in my speech, there are many things that we can do to help the situation. Let me say a bit about my own experience, which admittedly was a long time ago—”
“We had a distinct pyramidal team, with senior registrars, registrars and senior house officers, and we knew the people we were working with. They were people we had known as medical students; they were often the people who had taught us. That meant that there was a sort of support network for young doctors as they started in their careers. On the whole, the newly qualified doctors of today do not experience anything quite like that.”
“I know—it is hard to believe. I was a medical student in Sheffield, and my first jobs were at the Royal Hallamshire hospital and the Northern General hospital. I have fond memories of the time that we started there. There was, for instance, a doctors’ mess with hot food. There was somewhere for us to live; we had residences. It is ironic that the name “junior doctors” was changed—just last year, I think—to “resident doctors”, because that is the very last thing they are. The residences have all disappeared—they have been sold off—and the doctors work shift systems, sometimes with absolutely nowhere to rest. We had six-month rather than four-month rotations, which meant that we got to know the teams we worked with. We worked with named consultants.”
“The Government have taken one very important step, with the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026 giving UK graduates the rightful priority for specialist training places—and that matters. Today’s debate is an opportunity to take the next step to fix the starting point itself. We have in medicine one of the most extraordinary workforces in the world. Young doctors are among the best trained, most dedicated and most compassionate professionals. We owe them and, more importantly, the patients who depend on them, better than a lottery. We owe them the fair, well-supported, human start they deserve. I believe that would go a long way to resetting the Government’s relationship with the profession, and towards ending these damaging rolling strikes.”
“I do not think that would be particularly expensive; it might even cost less than the centralised allocation machinery we run today. Whatever we do, I offer one principle: medicine is the most distinctly human of professions and it is futile, and somewhat ironic, to try to reform it with an algorithm. The reform must be human. Let me close where I began. Resident doctors have just come off picket lines. I do not think that in this debate we can rehearse the pay dispute, which is a matter for another day, but the strikes are not just about pay. At root, they are about a sense that the profession has been treated as though it does not matter. The individual doctor has become invisible behind the workforce spreadsheet.”
“Medical schools know their students; they know who has the caring responsibilities, who has a linked partner, who has health needs, who has a strong reason to stay close to home. They are in the best possible position to start designing a year that makes sense for each individual. That does not preclude movement later. F2 can broaden horizons, and specialty training will often mean relocation, but in the critical first year, when doctors are doing their first on-calls up at night by themselves, writing their first prescriptions and being present at their first deaths, they should not be alone in a city where they do not know anybody. They should be doing that with the support of their friends, teachers and colleagues they already trust.”
“There is a crisis in this country of clinical academics, the doctors who teach the next generation of doctors. It has become very difficult to recruit into clinical academia. The career pathway for clinical academics has become very uncertain, and we have an emerging crisis—a real and present crisis—that must be addressed. One way to do that is to think about how we recruit foundation doctors into academic programmes. Here is a straightforward proposal, which I hope colleagues will improve rather than simply accept. Let us return to a firm-based model for the first year of training. The F1 placement should be arranged by the medical schools, not by a centralised national algorithm, with each new doctor placed alongside peers they already know with consultants who have taught them. That is the system we had so many years ago.”
“The BMA has taken a big interest in this question, which is not surprising, and I will read out some of its recommendations: “The BMA is calling for: meaningful improvements to working lives with greater access to support services, supervision, rest and mess facilities; increased flexibility in rotations, including the option to swap placements; a guarantee that all UK graduates will be offered a foundation post, with full details provided at least 12 weeks before the start date; and any review of the allocation system to include proposals for a new recruitment process developed with meaningful consultation with students.” There is another group of doctors that we should consider: those who will progress to become academic doctors.”
“Fairness rewards merit and responds to need; randomness does neither. What we have is not a reformed system, but an experiment that has gone wrong. That is not just my view. The medical training review led by Professor Stephen Powis and Professor Chris Whitty, published last October, drew on more than 8,000 responses, 6,000 of them from resident doctors. Its very first recommendation was that “a reform of postgraduate medical education and training is undertaken as a matter of urgency.” It also recommended that recruitment to medical training be reviewed so that it is “fair and equitable to all candidates”. It is not sufficient, on any reading of the report, for allocation merely to be random. Random is not fair.”
“The SJT was quite unpopular: it was stressful, it had unpredictable validity and there was a documented score gap that consistently disadvantaged candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds. That was a real and serious unfairness, and those who reformed the system were right to try to address it. When the students lobbied against the SJT, they had a good reason to do so, but they did not ask for a random number generator—yet that is essentially what they got. In 2024 the SJT was abolished and academic achievement stripped out. In their place came PIA, underpinned by a computer ranking. It is hard to think of a clearer case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Students asked for fairness, and they were given randomness. Those are not the same thing. Fairness takes account of circumstance; randomness ignores it.”
“When foundation doctors are disorientated, unsupported and demoralised, their work does not disappear; it flows upwards to the more senior doctors, who take more and more of it on themselves. Young doctors should not be deployed by ballot into strange cities, with only limited account taken of their circumstances—their partners, their dependants, their health or their need to be near home. The claim that the current system is somehow fairer than the one it replaced is, I am afraid, one we cannot accept. Let me talk about how we got here and the recent reform. The old system was not perfect. For many years, medical students competed on a combination of academic decile and a national examination known as the situation judgment test.”
“The foundation programme offers something called linked applications, but the unfairness is particularly acute. Two medical students in a relationship can choose to link their applications so that they are allocated together, but the pair is placed using the lower of the two ranks, so that if one of them is lucky in the ballot and the other is not, both are placed in the worst ranked situation. Should the algorithm be unable to accommodate both in a single school, the link is broken. A student cannot unlink once they have applied, and there is no appeal. The system quite simply cannot see that these are two people trying to begin their careers side by side. It just sees two records on a database. That has knock-on consequences throughout the rest of the service.”
“There is another reason why this headline figure flatters to deceive: the system incentivises what we call strategic preferencing. The students know the ranking system is random and that a high rank does not protect them tomorrow, so they game it. They preference the foundation schools they think they can realistically get, rather than the ones they actually want. A high first preference rate is, in part, a measure of the student lowering their ambition to protect themselves against a coin toss. That is not a system working; that is a system being worked around. Let me say a bit about couples. Medical students often form a couple with other medical students or other people who work in hospitals, because that is the nature of a hospital.”
“The UK foundation programme’s 2026 figures show that of the 10,810 graduates allocated this year, 82% received their first preference. Superficially, that sounds quite reassuring, but I do not really think it is. Every year, a minority of graduates—this year it is roughly 1,900 young doctors—end up somewhere other than their first choice. The minority who do not get their first preference find themselves, aged 22 or 23, packing up their lives for a city where they know nobody. As I put it in the Chamber last month, it is a “crazy foundation lottery that sends a doctor from Norwich to Belfast and a doctor from Belfast to Norwich.” —[ Official Report , 26 March 2026; Vol. 783, c. 452.] That is what we mean when we talk about a lottery. It is not a figure of speech, but a literal description of how the system works.”
“It also recognised that pastoral support and clinical teams matter, and that the transition from medical student to doctor is a particularly vulnerable moment in a medical career. Let us come back to that point soon. Today, we have a thing called the foundation programme. In 2024, the foundation programme office replaced the application process with something called preference informed allocation. What happens is that medical students list the foundation schools in order of preference, and are each assigned a computer-generated rank. The rank is not informed by academic achievement, personal circumstance, where the student trained or what they did; it simply works through the ranks and places the student accordingly.”
“I absolutely agree that doctors are only part of a much bigger healthcare system. We certainly need to look after all the people involved in health and social care. Of course, that is more of a problem in geographically remote districts such as the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, where I believe it is difficult to recruit professions of all sorts. I do not want only to sound nostalgic this morning, although of course I am. I am not arguing that absolutely everything was better in my time, because it certainly was not, but in one important respect it was better: it was designed around human beings. It understood that newly qualified doctors are individuals, not one of a herd to be simply moved across a map by a computer.”
“Some time ago, when I came here, I had working with me an intern, Dr Harry Dunn, who was a medical student at Cambridge University. He graduated last year. He came top, not only of the University of Cambridge medical student cohort, but of the whole of the University of Cambridge, so he was the top student of his year. He was offered a foundation post in Northern Ireland. He chose not to take it, and has now gone into consulting, having given up medicine. That is an extremely sad example of an unintended consequence of this crazy lottery.”
“I definitely think that this industrial dispute, which has been rolling and rumbling on for several years, is solvable. It sounds as though we were close to solving it and particularly to attending to the conditions of young doctors.”
“I thank all hon. Members who came to speak in the debate. I particularly thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan), who gave very interesting Back-Bench contributions. I also thank the Minister and the Opposition spokespeople—the hon. Members for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and for Winchester (Dr Chambers)—for their contributions. It is quite true that the shadow Minister and I grew up on the same street—probably about 10 houses apart, but many more than 10 years apart. This has been an interesting debate, whose purpose was to highlight the plight of foundation doctors. As we have said, if we can fix the foundations, we will be able to fix the problems we have with our young doctors.”
“I will wind up, then. I thank everyone very much, and I look forward to seeing success in the future. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the Foundation Programme and its role in supporting and retaining resident doctors.”
“6. What discussions the Church has had with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the planned timetable for the introduction of the places of worship renewal fund.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her answer. Church leaders in Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket are rightly concerned about the cancellation of the listed places of worship grant scheme. Will the Church Commissioner outline what conversations she has had with the Government regarding the support and guidance given to those people who are concerned with the upkeep of churches in my constituency and across the country? It is surely for our generation to preserve the legacy bequeathed to us by our forefathers.”
“I was pleased to be assured that it will honour the original prices quoted to customers who ordered on 28 February, 1 March and 2 March, at the start of hostilities. That provides immediate reassurance for those residents who acted promptly and should not be penalised. That must be our approach: immediate support for those facing rising costs now; proper oversight of the market; and long-term action to reduce dependence on heating oil. For rural communities in my patch, that is a necessity, which we should all push for.”
“Those most affected are those least able to absorb the extra cost, especially residents in council homes and in lower-income rural communities that are disproportionately hit. For many of those households there is no short-term alternative and no flexibility. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk said, the Government have taken some important steps in response. The £53 million emergency support fund is welcome, as is the warm homes plan providing targeted support for low-income households in rural areas. It is right that the money is distributed through local councils, which are often best placed to identify where the support is most urgently needed. I raised the matter locally with Goff, one of the principal suppliers of heating oil.”
“I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for securing this debate. I want to speak about the impact that the rising cost of heating oil is having on rural communities such as mine in Suffolk. Following events in the middle east, many residents who rely on heating oil contacted me—as I am sure happened to others—with understandable concerns about the sharp increase in prices. That matters because it is an immediate pressure on family budgets, one that many people feel powerless to avoid. This issue is important because my constituency has one of the highest number of households relying on heating oil. About 40% of all properties in the villages are completely off the grid. That means that many residents are exposed to this sudden price shock.”
“Q13. I would like first to thank the nurses, the doctors, the radiographers and the receptionists who were not on strike when I tripped and broke my wrist last week.After years of neglect, Labour is rebuilding our NHS, including the West Suffolk hospital at Bury St Edmunds and the new dental school at the University of East Anglia. Does the Prime Minister share my genuine alarm, as a surgeon who has worked at the frontline for more than 40 years, that the vague social insurance proposals of some of our opponents would be the end of our NHS and seriously threaten the health and wellbeing of millions of our fellow citizens?”
“That distinction matters, because some criticism has suggested that the amendment would create cliff edges, but we already have age limits in place today. The issue is not whether limits should exist; it is whether they are properly enforced, and whether they reflect the reality of how platforms operate. There has been a lot of debate about whether age verification actually works. The evidence from countries like Australia suggests that where it is not working, it is often because platforms are not properly enforcing the rules, or young people find ways around the ban through VPNs. That leads to a broader point: the onus must be squarely with the tech companies to implement the safeguards. Where the law sets a clear standard, platforms must meet it consistently and effectively.”
“Let me start by saying that I support the Government’s direction of travel on this Bill. The focus on children’s wellbeing, both in schools and out, is obviously right, but let me address Lords amendment 38, tabled by Lord Nash, about social media access; it was accepted back into the Bill, with a large majority. It has cross-party support and reflects growing concern not just in Parliament, but among parents, teachers and professionals working with young people. The amendment is quite simple: it is about delaying access to certain harmful social media services until children are 16. It is not a blanket ban or a restriction on everything, but targeted measures aimed at services that are not designed with children in mind.”
“We have heard about the consultation, and I support it in principle, but the scale of the issue is already well evidenced. There is a question about what additional insights small trials would realistically add, given the body of research that already exists.”
“I agree that we must hold the tech companies to account; they are the ones in control of the situation. The amendment proposes a higher standard—not simply “reasonable steps”, but highly effective age assurance, and that is meaningfully different. We have heard about movement internationally. France and Spain are taking similar steps, and others are following. We ought to be part of the broader shift in how Governments are approaching online safety for children. Also, this cannot just be about restrictions; of course, there is a role for education. Children need to understand the online environment that they are engaging with, particularly when it comes to the algorithms, data and content driven by artificial intelligence.”
“I understand exactly what the hon. Member says. My position is this: I support the Government, and I support the Bill, but I think the House should take very seriously what the Lords have asked us to consider. If the Government are not minded to accept the amendment as it stands, I believe there is a strong case for them to bring forward their own proposal to achieve the same outcome clearly and in a timely fashion. Ultimately, this is about setting the right boundaries for children in a digital world that is evolving quickly. There is a clear expectation, inside and outside this House, that we must act.”
“May I congratulate the ministerial team, the University of East Anglia and the Office for Students on finally getting the new dental school at the university over the line? It will admit 25 students from September next year and will go some way to dealing with the dental deserts that we inherited in Norfolk and Suffolk. In the meantime, what progress has been made with the General Dental Council to increase exam capacity for dentists coming from overseas to help with the present crisis?”
“However, just because we can predict it and identify the genes that are causing it, that does not mean that we will come up with magic treatments. We will certainly need to provide services for all the people with this condition into the future. Diagnostic pathways and well-organised arrangements for the clinical care of people with this presently completely incurable condition are essential.”
“Diagnosis is difficult, and we must first think of it. We should do what we can to educate people, particularly clinicians in medical schools and nursing schools, and even the general population. A debate such as this is certainly helpful in that respect. Research is essential. Specific genetic mutations are associated with many of the varieties of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome—sadly not the most common sort, but certainly many of the other sorts. The Minister may know that there is a proposal for universal genome sequencing of newborns and young people in this country. I do not think that future generations will have this problem of odd clinical symptoms accumulating over decades before somebody works out what has happened, because in future, people will be able to access their genomes. We will be able to predict what will happen.”
“In my long career as an ENT surgeon, I saw very few cases, but I am certain that I missed many cases. I did some brief research into ear, nose and throat surgery and Ehlers-Danlos, and there is a particularly frightening situation that occurs in patients who need to have their tonsils out. Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is associated with this instability of the neck vertebrae—the cervical vertebrae; the axis and the atlas bones. When one does a tonsillectomy, one anaesthetises a patient and tips their head right back to open the mouth as wide as one possibly can. I saw a report from 2013 by Agarwal of a child who developed quadriplegia after a tonsillectomy. The tonsils were taken out, and when the child woke up, the arms and legs would not move, because the spinal cord had been compressed by the subluxation of the vertebrae.”