Emergency legislation aims to prioritise UK medical graduates for core and higher speciality training places from 2026, addressing training bottlenecks and workforce shortages
The British Medical Association says the UK government’s Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill will give UK medical graduates priority access to NHS speciality training jobs from 2026, as part of efforts to tackle recruitment bottlenecks and high competition ratios.
The proposed legislation also includes plans for additional training posts, aiming to reduce the number of doctors unable to secure training despite years of NHS‑funded education. BMA leaders cautiously welcomed the move but warned that more action is needed to resolve the long‑standing training crisis.
UK government introduces emergency bill to prioritise uk medical graduates for speciality training
2025 analysis by The Doctor magazine revealed that 59,698 applications were made for the 12,743 speciality training posts in 2024, a 39.5 per cent increase on the 2023 figure.
BMA resident doctors committee chair Jack Fletcher has cautiously welcomed the proposed bill, stating that the announcement of emergency legislation suggested that the Government was ‘finally waking up to the urgency of the situation’ regarding training places.
He warned that the proposals are only the first step in resolving a much larger challenge, and that creating 1,000 new training places in England would be insufficient to address the crisis.
He said: “Today is a step forward, but we are still a long way from giving resident doctors in the UK confidence that the Government can finally solve the jobs crisis.
“This is a new policy of prioritising UK medical graduates for NHS jobs, which will come into effect across the four nations and will , to some extent, reduce the number of doctors who can’t find work despite the state having spent time and money training them up.”
He added: “If patients are hoping this news will mean substantially more doctors on the wards to treat them, they will be disappointed. There remain no new posts, and this alone will not dent the massive gap between applicants and places – nearly thirty thousand this year in England.
“To fix the jobs crisis for doctors, we will still need thousands more genuinely new jobs – this is why doctors in England voted overwhelmingly in December to continue with industrial action over the jobs crisis in the NHS.”
Eligibility criteria clarified for EU and international medical graduates
Graduates from the Republic of Ireland, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein would also see their applications prioritised for speciality training and the foundation programme, owing to pre-existing trade agreements between the UK and these countries.
IMGs (international medical graduates) already in the UK who have completed foundation or core training, or who have secured indefinite leave to remain, EU settled status, or British dual-citizenship, will be eligible for prioritisation for speciality training. IMGs who do not meet these criteria may still apply for speciality training roles, but their applications will not be prioritised.
Dr Fletcher said: “We are concerned about the effect on doctors with significant NHS experience who have trained abroad. We’ve made clear that any change to speciality training post applications would need to protect and recognise those international doctors with significant experience, something that this legislation at present does not go far enough on.
“We appreciate that the UK Government is finally moving with more urgency, using emergency legislation – which begins to recognise the scale of the issue – but we need to go further and faster.”
