Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the scale of the bottleneck between foundation and speciality training for NHS doctors; and what steps they are taking to address this.

The Government continues to keep the number of medical speciality training places it funds under review, and has taken significant action to expand places over recent years. In January 2023, Health Education England, now part of NHS England, announced that nearly 900 additional medical specialty training posts had been created for that year, including more than 500 in the key areas of mental health and cancer treatment. This built on funding for more than 750 additional training posts across speciality programmes for 2022. Future specialty growth will take the total increase to more than 2,000 places over three years, from 2021 to 2024.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan published in June last year set out a commitment to double the number of medical school places in England by 2031/32. The plan also included a commitment to ensure there is adequate growth in foundation placement capacity, as students begin to graduate from the expanded number of medical school places, and a commensurate increase in specialty training places that meets the demands of the National Health Service in England, in the future. We will work with stakeholders to ensure this growth is sustainable, and focused in the service areas where need is greatest.