Question to the Department for Education:

What steps his Department is taking to increase the number of places on medical courses available to undergraduates.

The government is committed to ensuring that the number and distribution of medical school places are in line with England’s workforce requirements and continues to monitor the effectiveness of current arrangements.

Applications for medicine and dentistry made by the June deadline increased by over 20,000 this year compared to last year for all domiciles. We have increased the medical and dentistry caps so that providers can take on more students and we have run a brokerage scheme to help move over 80 students at oversubscribed providers into unfilled places.

In addition, we are providing up to £10m in grant funding for providers to take on more students in high-cost subjects, such as medicine, dentistry, nursing and other lab-based courses.