The government has agreed in principle that the General Medical Council, the medical profession’s regulator, will take over responsibility for postgraduate medical training in the United Kingdom.

The move to assimilate the Postgraduate Medical and Training Board within the GMC—which will not go ahead before 2010—has been welcomed by Graeme Catto, the council’s president. Sir Graeme said, “The merger will bring under one roof the regulation of all stages of medical education and will deliver real benefits for patients and the public, as well as for the medical profession.”

He added that the board, which was set up in autumn 2005, had made an important contribution to postgraduate medical education in the UK and promised to maintain the momentum it had generated.

However, in a statement the Royal College of Surgeons of England expressed its disappointment at the slow timetable for implementing the change. “We are pleased with the acceptance that PMETB [the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board] will become part of the GMC. However, it is disappointing that no opportunity can apparently be found to carry out this badly needed reform until 2010,” it said.

Altogether the government agreed (or agreed in principle) to 24 of 47 recommendations made by John Tooke in …