NHS 10-year plan ‘will prioritise UK medical graduates for speciality training’

The upcoming 10-year plan for the NHS will reportedly pledge to prioritise UK medical graduates – and other doctors who have worked in the NHS ‘for a significant period’ – for foundation and specialty training.

The Government will commit to hiring no more than one in 10 NHS recruits from overseas in order to create a ‘self-sufficient workforce by 2035’ as part of the plan, according to a report in the Times. 

The plan, which will be published in the coming days, is also expected to include a greater emphasis on training GPs over hospital doctors, after the chancellor specified GP training as a priority investment area in long-term spending review.

It will also reportedly criticise the previous Conservative Government for expanding training ‘without a commensurate expansion in postgraduate training places’. 

Describing this as ‘unacceptable’, the plan will prioritise ‘UK medical graduates and other doctors who have worked in the NHS for a significant period for foundation and specialty training’.

It comes after the BMA backed a proposal to prioritise UK medical school graduates over international medical graduates (IMGs) for training posts, at their national conference last month.

Doctor leaders raised concerns over ‘exponentially increasing competition ratios for speciality training, driven primarily by overseas recruitment’ and voted in favour of a motion to guarantee all UK medical school graduates a foundation programme post for all future recruitment cycles, as well as offering UK graduates specialty training posts first.

This included an exception for IMGs who are GMC registered and practicing in the NHS on or before 5 March 2025 and who have two years or go on to gain two years of NHS experience.

However, the union’s GP committee has previously criticised BMA resident doctors for passing a similar ‘protectionist policy’ around speciality places, arguing that it disadvantaged IMGs.

According to the Times, under the plan work coaches ‘will be stationed in GP surgeries’ and local NHS chiefs ‘will be given targets to help the sick return to work’.

The proposals for helping people back into work were first announced in a White Paper published in November, including programmes using health coaches in GP practices to ‘offer advice, coaching and support’ to people when health issues become a barrier to working.

In April, the first of nine trailblazer programmes to get people back into work has begun in South Yorkshire, with GPs helping to identify those who may benefit.

Last year, NHS leaders recommended that GP practices should host work coaches and other career advice services to help people get back to work, and plans for GP surgeries to station job coaches to get unemployed over-50s back to work had also been floated by the previous Government.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told Pulse: ‘We do not comment on speculation or leaks.

‘Our 10 Year Health Plan will set out how we will deliver the fundamental reform required to rebuild the NHS.’

Other details of the plan have already been revealed, including a review of the Carr-Hill formula for GP funding.