Mr. Martin Varley:

On the question of training and having sufficient numbers of consultants, some of the figures that were referred to relate to agency doctors. I know the background to this because we submitted a freedom of information request concerning the cost of agency doctors in certain hospitals where we knew people who are not specialists had been appointed in a temporary capacity through agency contracts. Not only are we paying them double the normal salary for consultants who are not new entrants and triple what new entrants are being paid, but those doctors are not specialist trained. That raises several concerns.