Back when the requirement for nurses to take a degree course came in (all the way back in 2009) we muttered more than a little about how this wasn’t in fact a good idea. And so it has turned out:

School leavers will be able to start working as doctors without going to university, under new NHS plans to fix the growing staff crisis.

The apprenticeship scheme could allow one in 10 doctors to start work without a traditional medical degree, straight after their A-levels. A third of nurses are also expected to be trained under the "radical new approach".

It might be an approach but it’s neither radical nor new. It is, in fact, profoundly conservative. It’s an acknowledgement that one of those bright ideas of the Blair years wasn’t bright and is therefore to be reversed.

Don’t forget, nursing training used to be a couple of days of learning how to wash your hands properly then several years apprenticeship on the wards. Which is apparently what we’re to go back to.

The only pity is that the planners decided to take us on this decade and a half diversion. All hail planning, eh?

Oh, and expect the Royal College of Nursing to be spitting feathers - they were so proud of becoming an all graduate profession.