Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if her Department will take steps to increase central funding for clinical radiology trainee posts.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out an aim to double the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 places a year by 2031/32. The plan commits to ensuring a commensurate increase in specialty training places that meets the demands of the National Health Service in the future.

On 10 January 2023, Health Education England, now NHS England, announced that nearly 900 additional medical specialty training posts have been created for that year, including 100 clinical radiology posts, building on an increase of 110 clinical radiology specialty training posts in 2022.

We are set to complete the planned increase in medical specialty training places by September 2024 to more than 2,000 over three years, as well as 1,000 additional specialty training places focusing on areas with the greatest shortages. This expansion is both supporting existing planned growth for mental health, cancer and diagnostic services, as well as elective recovery, urgent and acute care, maternity services and public health medicine.

The Department’s budgets for 2024/25, including for radiology trainee posts, will be confirmed in due course.