Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to increase the numbers of doctors in training.

The Government has announced a historic 25% increase in the number of medical school training places with an additional 1,500 medical school places to be made available for domestic students at English universities. The first 500 places have been allocated by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to existing medical schools and places will be available from September 2018. The remaining 1,000 places will be allocated through a competitive bidding process currently being undertaken by HEFCE and Health Education England and places will be available to students from September 2019.

This expansion will allow more domestic students to train as doctors and will increase our supply of home grown doctors.