Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent proposals she has received for the establishment of new medical schools; and how many new training places each of these proposals would provide.

In 2016, the Secretary of State for Health announced the Government’s commitment to expanding the number of undergraduate medical training places available each year by 1,500. The Government response to the public consultation on how to implement these proposals was published on 9 August 2017. It confirmed the commitment to an expansion of 1,500 places, starting with an increase of 500 places in August 2018.

The consultation response also outlined the Government’s priorities for inclusion in the bidding criteria for the allocation of the remaining 1,000 places from August 2019. There will be some flexibility to consider phased starts in 2018-19 or 2020-21 where bids that are best able to meet the Government’s policy objectives provide strong evidence of the need to provide places to a different timescale.

Since publication of the consultation response, the Secretary of State for Education has not received proposals for the establishment of new medical schools. Further information is due in the autumn from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Health Education England (HEE), who are currently designing the competitive bidding process in which established, new and aspiring medical schools can participate.