Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the cost to the public purse is of training a (a) consultant, (b) junior doctor, (c) GP and (d) nurse.

The Department does not hold information on the average cost to the taxpayer of training someone to become a consultant, junior doctor, general practitioner (GP) and nurse.

The Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent estimates within their report ‘Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2014’, published in 2015, that the average cost in 2014/15 of training to become a consultant is £508,819, the cost to be a junior doctor is £380,850, the cost to be a GP is £385,523, and the training cost to be a nurse is £80,807.

These figures reflect the pre-registration costs of tuition, living expenses/lost production and clinical placements and the post-graduate costs of tuition and replacement costs not the average cost to the taxpayer.