To ask the Secretary of State for Health if, in the light of recent evidence published in the British Medical Journal of 26 May on the causes of certain obstetric accidents, he will undertake a review of the training of junior doctors in relation to foetal heart monitoring and the use of obstetric forceps.

The training of junior hospital doctors in the use of techniques such as foetal monitoring and the application of forceps is a matter for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the individual consultants under whose supervision such junior doctors work. However, issues like those identified in the recent article in the British Medical Journal will, as a matter of course, be raised during the regular meetings held between the Department and the college.