I can't find anything to support this online, but I do distinctly remember reading once that the cap on medical student places goes back to the founding of the

I can't find anything to support this online, but I do distinctly remember reading once that the cap on medical student places goes back to the founding of the NHS and negotiations between the government and the BMA. (One of the issues at the time was persuading doctors to join the plan, and they were afraid of a drop in income). It's fairly trivial to analyse population vs. medical student places and see where the problem lies - there was an expansion in training places a few years ago, but it's a pipeline problem, and doesn't get fixed overnight. If somebody really wanted to fix things, there would probably need to be some kind of accelerated training of doctors and nurses for a few years.