Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions his Department has had with the British Medical Association on medical students receiving less than two hours of teaching on eating disorders throughout their undergraduate training.

The Department has not had conversations with the British Medical Association about the amount of teaching on eating disorders in undergraduate medical training. The standard of training for doctors is the responsibility of the General Medical Council (GMC). The GMC sets the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approves courses and medical schools to write and teach the curricula content that enables their students to meet the GMC’s outcome standards.

Since the 2024/25 academic year, medical students graduating from UK universities have been required to pass the Medical Licensing Assessment, for which the GMC has published a content map documenting the conditions which students are expected to have knowledge. This is available at the following link: https://www.gmc-uk.org/-/media/documents/mla-content-map-_pdf-85707770.pdf. Eating disorders are included in the content map.