Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many senior managers in the NHS, including NHS Trusts and administrative bodies, earn over £100,000 a year.
Answered by Will Quince
At NHS Trusts and other core organisations, between October 2021 and September 2022, 3,010 staff earnt over £100,000. Furthermore, in the same time period, at NHS Support Organisations and Central Bodies, 500 staff earnt over that amount. All remuneration, including non-basic pay elements such as band supplements, medical awards, geographic allowances, local payments, on call payments, overtime, recommended retail prices, shift work payments and other payments, are included in this total.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the main reasons given by nurses and doctors are for leaving NHS employment.
Answered by Will Quince
Data is collected from staff leaving service in National Health Service trusts and commissioning bodies through the Electronic Staff Record on reasons for leaving but has a high percentage of instances where reasons are unknown, 39% for doctors and 41% for nurses and health visitors. Where reasons are provided, the highest number of NHS trust and commissioning body doctors left those bodies due the end of fixed term contracts. This is high as it covers junior doctors moving out of those settings to others, such as general practice, on rotation. This was followed by voluntary resignation reasons and retirement. For nurses and health visitors, the highest proportion of staff recording a reason, left due to voluntary resignation and reaching retirement age. A table of the reason of leaving and the number of staff is attached.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what main criteria are considered when hiring NHS medical staff other than their medical qualifications.
Answered by Will Quince
Local National Health Service trusts are responsible for managing their own staffing levels, making recruitment decisions and recruiting the number of health professionals with the appropriate skills and qualifications required to meet local service need.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will review the administration and record keeping hospital doctors need to do to ease their jobs whilst recording important information.
Answered by Will Quince
Administration and record keeping are overlapping but slightly separate matters. Some hospitals employ doctors’ assistants to help with administrative work, especially for doctors working on wards. There are varying practices across different National Health Service organisations regarding who records information in records. The Records Management Code of Practice for Health and Social Care 2021 is a guide to the practice of managing records. All health and care employees are responsible for managing records appropriately. Records must be managed in accordance with the law and each organisation should have a designated member of staff who leads on records management.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many managers have been appointed in the NHS since the end of 2019.
Answered by Will Quince
The following table shows number and the change in full-time equivalent managers working in the National Health Service trusts and commissioning bodies from the end of 2019 to the most recent month that the data is available.
| December 2019 | October 2022 | Change |
Senior Managers | 10,981 | 12,698 | 1,717 (15.6%) |
Managers | 22,137 | 23,966 | 1,829 (8.3%) |
Total of managers | 33,118 | 36,664 | 3,546 (10.7%) |
Source: NHS Digital Workforce Statistics
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many additional non-medical staff have been recruited to the NHS since the end of 2019.
Answered by Will Quince
The following table shows the increase in number of full-time equivalent non-medical staff, by staff group, working in National Health Service trusts and commissioning bodies from the end of 2019 to the latest month that the data is available.
Staff group | December 2019 | October 2022 | Change |
Non-medical professionally qualified clinical staff | 479,815 | 527,280 | 47,465 (9.9%) |
Support to clinical staff | 341,992 | 385,084 | 43,092 (12.6%) |
NHS infrastructure support staff | 180,540 | 205,321 | 24,781 (13.7%) |
Total non-medical staff | 1,002,347 | 1,117,685 | 115,338 (11.5%) |
Source: NHS Digital Workforce Statistics.
Note:
Non-medical professionally clinical qualified staff will include nurses, midwives, ambulance staff and scientific, therapeutic and technical staff.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with NHS staff on (a) conditions of employment, (b) workload and (c) other non pay matters affecting recruitment and retention.
Answered by Will Quince
Ministers’ regularly meet with National Health Service staff and their representative bodies to discuss ongoing issues, including conditions of employment, workload, recruitment and retention.
The NHS People Plan and NHS People Promise, published in July 2020, sets out a comprehensive range of actions that are focussed on making the NHS a better place to work and improving retention. This includes a stronger focus on health and wellbeing, strengthening leadership and management to support staff and expanding opportunities for flexible working. The long term workforce plan that we have committed to publishing this year will build on this so that we can ensure the NHS has the robust and resilient workforce it needs for the future.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help recruit more permanent staff to the NHS and reduce dependence on Agency staff.
Answered by Will Quince
This Government is growing the National Health Service workforce. There are now over 42,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) more staff working in NHS provider trusts and commissioning bodies than October 2021, including almost 4,700 more doctors and over 10,500 more nurses. We are working hard to deliver 50,000 nurses by the end of March 2024 and we are well on the way towards achieving this aim with over 36,000 more nurses working in the NHS now compared with September 2019.
The Government has funded 1,500 more medical school places each year for domestic students in England, a 25% increase over three years. This expansion was completed in September 2020 and has delivered five new medical schools in England. There are currently record numbers of medical students in training.
The Department of Health and Social Care has also commissioned NHS England to develop a long-term workforce plan. The plan will look at the mix and number of staff required across all parts of the country and will set out the actions and reforms that will be needed to reduce supply gaps and improve retention. A temporary workforce market allows the NHS to meet demand fluctuations without the need to increase capacity above that which would be required on a sustained basis. Staff can be drawn from internal staff banks or external agencies.
Measures were introduced in 2015 to control agency spending and include price caps, limiting the amount a trust can pay to an agency for temporary staff, the mandatory use of approved frameworks for procurement, and the requirement for all trusts to stay within the specified Annual Expenditure Ceilings for agency staff. The agency rules outlined were effective in reducing spending on agency staffing by a third between 2015/16 and 2020/21.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to encourage NHS managers to use (a) promotions (b) increments and (c) flexibilities in pay scales to retain and motivate staff.
Answered by Will Quince
Retention within the National Health Service is a complex issue and decisions to leave are taken due to a multitude of factors, of which pay is only one. The NHS Retention Programme seeks to understand why staff leave, resulting in targeted interventions to support staff to stay whilst keeping them well. Locally, employers in the NHS have the option to use measures like pay increments and promotions to attract and retain staff.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to increase the number of beds in NHS hospitals.
Answered by Will Quince
As part of the NHS England’s operational resilience and capacity plan for winter, the National Health Service is increasing bed capacity by the equivalent of 7,000 general and acute hospital beds. This includes a mix of new physical beds and innovative virtual wards.
On 9 January the Government announced £200 million of funding to allow local areas to buy thousands of extra beds in care homes and other settings to help discharge more patients who are fit to leave hospital and free up hospital beds for those who need them. This is an addition of the £500 million Adult Social Care Discharge Fund announced in December which is also supporting hospital bed capacity.