Reform UK would remove limits on training UK doctors and slash annual student loan expenditure by £4 billion in its first 100 days in office if it were to take power, says its education spokesperson Suella Braverman.
In a speech to the party’s autumn conference, the former Conservative MP told delegates that she would immediately “scrap the cap on homegrown British doctors” if it came to power, noting how “25,000 young Brits applied to study medicine at university, but only 8,000 were admitted”.
“Wonder why nearly two-thirds of young Brits who want to be doctors are rejected by our universities and many end up going to Australia? It’s because successive Labour and Conservative governments have imposed a cap known as intake targets on medical training places,” Braverman told the conference in Birmingham on 5 September.
“Absurdly, previous governments would rather import thousands of foreign doctors than train our own young people. Madness. And that’s why since 2019, the number of foreign doctors has grown four times as fast as the number of British doctors,” she continued, adding: “We rely on too many foreign doctors to keep our NHS going.”
Referring to an “aspiring student doctor” called Emily who, she said, had been forced to emigrate after being denied a place at medical school, Braverman said she would quit as education secretary if Nigel Farage refused to lift the current cap on medical school places.
