Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to increase the number of medical school places to meet patient demand in the West Midlands.

We are making available 1,500 additional medical school places in England, 630 of which will be available this September.

Following an initial allocation of 500 additional places to existing medical schools, and a competitive bidding and allocation process for the remaining 1,000 places run by Health Education England and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (now the Office for Students), a total of 177 additional medical school places have been allocated to medical schools in the West Midlands.

A breakdown of the places allocated in the West Midlands is provided in the following table and full details can be found at the following link:

https://hee.nhs.uk/news-blogs-events/news/new-medical-schools-open-train-doctors-future