TRAINING more “home-grown” doctors to end NHS reliance on foreign medics will not be enough to plug the recruitment gap, doctor’s union the BMA said yesterday in reponse to Jemery Hunt’s nonsense pledge to replace them all.

The Health Secretary announced at the Tory conference that he will lift a cap on the number of medical school places from 6,000 to 7,500 a year but that would only go part of the way to address the NHS staffing crisis, the BMA warned.

Overseas medical staff would still be needed to keep the NHS running, it said.

A quarter of the medical workforce are foreign doctors but £3.3 billion is spent on agency staff per year, including £1.2bn on locums of which many are from overseas, according to the government.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the reforms would lower spending on expensive agency staff and allow more British people to become doctors.

Mr Hunt also announced that all doctors trained on the NHS — at an average cost to taxpayers of £220,000 — will have to work in public healthcare for a minimum of four years after graduating.

BMA council chairman Mark Porter said: “While it is welcome that Hunt finally admits the government has failed to train enough doctors to meet rising demand, this announcement falls far short of what is needed.

“We desperately need more doctors, particularly with the government plans for further seven-day services, but it will take a decade for extra places at medical school to produce more doctors.

“This initiative will not stop the NHS from needing to recruit overseas staff.”

Shadow health secretary Diane Abbott said Mr Hunt’s ideas were an improvement but do not solve any problems on their own when announced against the backdrop of the Tories cutting £22bn from the NHS budget.

She added: “The idea we can be self-sufficient in medical staff is ridiculous.

“An additional 1,500 doctors’ training places only scratches the surface of professionals that are needed to staff our health service. Some of these will drop out and others choose to work abroad.”