THE WITCH DOCTOR’S OFFERING – MMC
MMC – UNCORRECTED SCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE, COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE, 15 NOVEMBER 2007
Sir Liam Donaldson KB, Professor Martin Marshall, Ms Clare Chapman, and Mr Nic Greenfield.
“Sir Liam Donaldson: I know that some of this is caught up in language and terminology, but might I just clarify that to begin with. The original programme was not called Modernising Medical Carers. It was, as you rightly say, a reform of the senior house officer grade, which was, in my view, an educational scandal in this country and needed to be remedied. I produced a report, advised by members of an expert committee, which suggested reforms to the SHO grade. The Modernising Medical Careers programme then was a broadening out of that.
MMC – UNCORRECTED SCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE, COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE, 6TH DECEMBER 2007
Professor Sir John Tooke and Sir Jonathen Michael
Dr Richard Marks, Mr Matthew Jameson Evans and Professor Steve O’Rahilly
“Professor Sir John Tooke: The Committee will be aware that the distress caused by the selection system known as MTAS in the spring generated a good deal of anxiety within the profession. That ultimately precipitated the then Secretary of State for Health having a telephone conversation with me and inviting me to consider chairing an independent panel to look into the circumstances surrounding that perceived failure.”
MMC – UNCORRECTED SCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE, COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE, 13TH DECEMBER 2007
Professor Alan Crockard and Professor Shelley Heard
Dr Jo Hilborne, Dr Ian Wilson and Dr Ramesh Mehta
Mr Mark Johnston
“Professor Crockard: I think the final stage was total frustration, feeling that our views as medical people, and as people with an interest and background in education, was being neglected. I felt that the whole principles of MMC, which I thought were very important, were being subsumed into an attempt to get the workforce running. We saw the situation unfold from fairly well back; I had tried very hard to make this known to the SRO to whom I was accountable in terms of MMC, and to the DCMO.”
MMC – UNCORRECTED SCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE, COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE, 17th JANUARY 2008
Professor Dame Carol Black, Mr Bernard Ribeiro and Dr Bill Reith
Professor Elisabeth Paice, Professor David Sowen and Professor Sarah Thomas
“Mr Bernard Ribeiro: Therefore, we supported the initial principles of MMC in Unfinished Business but not what happened subsequently; it was imposed. Many of the comments that our college made were ignored in this situation.”
MMC – UNCORRECTED SCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE, COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE, 24th JANUARY 2008
Professor Peter Rubin, Professor Neil Douglas and Professor Sir Nick Wright
Ms Anne Rainsberry, Dr Moira Livingston and Ms Sian Thomas
“Professor Rubin: The timing was largely coincidence. I should qualify that by saying that I was not involved in the establishment of PMETB. I came on the scene somewhat later than the establishment process, which was earlier on. Inquiries and reviews going back to 1970 recommended that postgraduate medical education should be regulated, as undergraduate medical education has been since 1858. The most recent of those reviews was the Bristol heart inquiry and in that review Ian Kennedy very clearly recommended that postgraduate education should be regulated and PMETB was a consequence. MMC was developing in parallel with all that. One of the issues that has been all too apparent to us is that, because the MMC came on the scene at much the same time, there has been a lot of confusion about what the two organisations do.”
MMC – UNCORRECTED SCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE, COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE, 18th FEBRUARY 2008
Ms Lorraine Rogerson and Ms Judith MacGregor
Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP, Mr Hugh Taylor, Sir Liam Donaldson and Ms Clare Chapman
“Ms Rogerson: The Department of Health first approached the Home Office in 2005 about using the Immigration Rules to limit further competition for training posts from international medical graduates.”
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