Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average cost to the NHS is of educating and training a junior doctor.

The Department does not hold information on the average cost to the taxpayer of training someone to become a junior doctor.

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 March 2014, that the average cost in 2013/14 of training to become a general practitioner is £485,390, with the consultant training cost being £726,551. 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.