During a Westminster Hall debate, Anne McIntosh said: "It's a controversial thing to say, but perhaps I as a woman can say this – 70% 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. And I think that is something that is going to put a huge burden on the health service."
Ms Soubry replied: "Could I just say very quickly that 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." She later issued a statement saying: "I fully support women GPs. My comments were not intended to be derogatory and I was responding to a point made by another MP during the debate.
Shadow Public Health Minister, Diane Abbott MP, Responding to the comments by Anne McIntosh that women doctors place a "tremendous burden" on the NHS, said: "It is wrong to imply that women doctors are a burden on the NHS. Women doctors aren't the ones putting the NHS under pressure and causing a crisis in A&E: David Cameron is wasting £3 billion on an unnecessary top-down reorganisation and cutting 4,000 nurses. It's typical of the out-of-touch Tories - when things go wrong in the NHS, they blame anyone but themselves."
Tory MP Dr Sarah Wolleston took to twitter to say "what a load of (mc)tosh"
