Ministers promise action after foreign students 'flooded the hospital system'

The report into the Government's botched handling of medical training found a series of blunders meant that 33,000 junior doctors were chasing 22,000 training posts this year.

Its author, Professor Sir John Tooke, said the problem occurred because ministers had failed to anticipate that more than 10,000 doctors would apply from overseas, thus "flooding" the market.

Ministers have now promised to consider his recommendation that British medical graduates should be guaranteed their first year of training, with overseas doctors able to apply only later.

Sir John's report criticised ministers for ignoring warnings over shortcomings in the system known as Modernising Medical Careers, or MMC. He said it needs a complete overhaul - including a return to more face-to-face interviews.

The ill-fated online application system had to be abandoned this summer after it repeatedly crashed, and consultants complained that the best candidates were not being put forward for the best posts.

"This has been a sorry episode for British postgraduate medicine, which has caused great distress to many trainees and their senior colleagues," said Sir John.

MMC was designed to reform training so a graduate could progress to consultant level in 11 years rather than the current 14.

But it descended into crisis this year when 32,649 applicants competedfor 23,247 specialist training.

Because overseas applicants took many of the available posts, thousands of UK graduates were not given the chance to train in hospital after five years at medical school.

Sir John said it was "quite frankly misjudged" that ministers did not anticipate overseas candidates would put themselves forward, given the high salaries available in the UK.

Instead, they "flooded the system".

He added: "We have an obligation to get our own graduates to the point of registration.

"I t's guaranteeing that our graduates can fully register as a doctor and seems entirely reasonable to us."

European and overseas doctors would be able to apply for the second year of medical training.

But even then there might be an oversupply of overseas applicants, and Sir John said ministers might have to consider restricting access for the second year too.

"It's a sensitive political issue which cuts across government departments but it is something that government has to seek a resolution on."

The online application system was shelved after thousands of junior doctors marched through London calling on then Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt to resign.