HEALTH Minister Anna Soubry has been forced to explain herself after appearing to agree with one of the region's MPs that women doctors are a burden on the NHS.

Tory Anne McIntosh, MP for Thirsk and Moulton, said training female doctors who go on to have children and then work part-time places a tremendous strain on the health service.

Ms Soubry appeared to accept her point over the unintended consequences of motherhood on resources, given the high numbers of women training to be doctors.

But she was later forced to clarify her comments, insisting she fully supports female GPs and that her comments were not intended as derogatory.

During a Westminster Hall debate today (Wednesday, June 5) on the widely-criticised 111 urgent care helpline, Miss McIntosh said: "Its a controversial thing to say, but perhaps I as a woman can say this - 70 per cent of medical students currently are women and they are very well educated and very well qualified.

"When they go into practice and then in the normal course of events will marry and have children, they often want to go part-time and it is obviously a tremendous burden training what effectively might be two GPs working part-time where they are ladies.

"I think that is something that is going to put a huge burden on the health service."

She also revealed that last year she became so frustrated with the 111 service in County Durham - where her late father lived - that she rang off.

The MP said her father, an elderly retired GP who lived in Teesdale, needed to see a doctor to check whether he had a urinary infection but it took so long to get medical help via the 111 line that she rang off and dialled 999 for an ambulance.

Miss McIntosh also expressed concern that the 12m debt carried by the NHS in North Yorkshire could affect the roll-out of the 111 service.

She told MPs: "I believe that people just want to see their GP. They want to walk in to the surgery or phone up and speak to their own GP. Sometimes 111 can be seen as a barrier, as NHS Direct was, to seeing one's own GP."

Ms Soubry replied: "Could I just say very quickly you make a very important point when you talk about, rightly, the good number of women who are training to be doctors but the unintended consequences."

But she later issued a statement saying: "I fully support women GPs, my comments were not intended to be derogatory."

However, Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: "I cannot believe that women doctors are being blamed for problems in the NHS."

A spokesman for the British Medical Association said: "Having a family or choosing to work flexibly should not be perceived as a negative career option, for women or men." 

Dr Rachel McMahon, a GP at the Coulby Medical Practice in Middlesbrough, said she was a mother who works full-time.

"I think more and more GPs are wanting to work either part-time or flexibly because of the demands of the job and I think working full-time is very demanding and very stressful."

She added: "I think 111 is failing because of the way its been set up. It is failing because it is using untrained call handlers who have to rigidly follow a protocol. The evidence is that the more skilled the person the more cost-effective the service."