Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will amend the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026 to include public health medicine.

The Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026 implements the Government’s commitment in the 10-Year Health Plan to prioritise United Kingdom medical graduates for foundation training places, and to prioritise UK medical graduates and other doctors with significant National Health Service experience for specialty training places.

The act excludes from prioritisation any specialty programmes wholly in the field of public health. This is because, unlike any other postgraduate medical specialty training programme, public health allows medical graduates and eligible graduates with backgrounds other than medicine to apply for and undertake the training.

There are no current plans to amend the act to change this position. The system of prioritisation introduced by the act applies to medical graduates. Including programmes wholly in the area of public health within this system would result in unduly prioritising medical graduates over other, non-medical applicants and would undermine the multi-disciplinary public health workforce.

The Government will, as for all legislation, keep the act under review to ensure that it delivers its policy intent.