England needs a new body to oversee and champion postgraduate medical education to overcome the “many deficiencies” of the Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) programme, recommends the inquiry into the failed attempt to reform junior doctors’ training.

A new body would be key to ensuring that specialist training in England gets back on track, says the report. It should be “rapidly formed to redefine the guiding principles that should govern the nature and conduct of postgraduate medical education and training in the future”—something that MMC lacked, it says.

The final report of John Tooke’s inquiry says that the new body, which would be called NHS Medical Education England, should have ringfenced funding and be outside the control of the Department of Health.

The inquiry was ordered in April 2007 by the then health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, after one of the …