Mr. Anthony Owens:

The Chairman asked about the value added by a permanent consultant staff member. Our consultants are very highly trained, very highly specialised and very highly sought after across the world but we sometimes forget that they are also trainers. They are developing the next generation of consultants. If we do not have people in the posts now developing the next generation of consultants, we are simply storing up another set of problems, which will manifest themselves when we do not have the people coming through. One reason we are losing the non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, which we have discussed quite a bit today, is the difficulty in getting high-quality training in an overwhelmingly service-driven environment.