Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many training posts were offered to medical graduates in the last 12 months; how many and what proportion of medical graduates were not offered a training post in that period; and whether her Department plans to increase the number of medical training posts available to graduate doctors in future years.

Following graduation from medical schools in the United Kingdom, graduates can apply to enter year one of the Foundation Programmes (FP) to commence training in the National Health Service. All UK medical school graduates who applied for year one of the 2022 FP were offered a post, with 8,209 foundation training places filled.

From 2023, the number of FP training posts will increase to accommodate the expansion of medical school intake of 1,500 between 2018 and 2020. From 2025, the number of FP posts will also increase in line with the temporary increase in medical students who completed A-Levels in 2020 and 2021 who had an offer from a university in England to study medicine, subject to their grades.