Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment has he made of the potential implications for his policies of trends in the length of the waiting list for post-mortem examinations for children.

NHS England is aware of the workforce challenges within perinatal pathology, which can impact on waiting times. A national programme was established in late 2022 to address this, and significant work has been undertaken in relation to workforce funding, training, and incentives. Actions taken include:

- the 2024 launch of a fully funded international recruitment campaign;

- a £20,000 golden handshake for doctors entering paediatric and perinatal pathology training;

- additional funding being made available to support training posts in areas where there have been interested candidates but no training post for them at a specific provider/location;

- the appointment of a new National Training Programme Director role which has revised the examination structure and aspects of the national training course, and supported an increase in the number of training posts across several recruitment rounds; and

- the perinatal and paediatric training pathway, which will be at a full complement of 16 training posts from February 2026, and with applications for the next specialty training level three having exceeded expectations.

NHS England is also pursuing medium-long-term options to increase service capacity alongside workforce initiatives.

A system of national mutual aid was established in late 2022 to maintain timely access to National Health Service post-mortems in areas with workforce shortages. This has been supported by over £1 million of additional funding in 2025/26.