Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the number of training places for vascular surgeons to 30 to 40 each year.

In January 2023 Health Education England announced that nearly 900 additional medical specialty training posts have been created for this year, including the expansion of 20 specialty training posts in vascular surgery, from August 2023. An additional 15 posts are planned from August 2024.

As of March 2023, there were 303 full time equivalent consultants working in the Vascular Surgery specialism in NHS trusts & integrated care boards in England. This is an increase of 21 (7.5%) compared to March 2022.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan recently published by NHS England sets out an aim to double the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 places a year by 2031/32, and to work towards this expansion by increasing places by a third, to 10,000 a year, by 2028/29. The plan commits to ensuring a commensurate increase in specialty training places that meets the demands of the NHS in the future