Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to recruit more midwives into the NHS.

As of November 2023, there are 23,396 full-time equivalent midwives working in National Health Service trusts and other core NHS organisations in England. This is 3,647, or 18.5%, more than in 2010.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, sets out the steps the NHS and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. The plan sets out the expectation that we will increase midwifery training places by 13% to 4,269 places a year for students starting this academic year. We expect that 5% of midwifery placements will be delivered through apprenticeships by 2028.

Additionally, in March 2023 NHS England published its three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services. The plan sets out a target for trusts to have in place the appropriate number of posts required and to fill those roles by 2027/28. To support this, the Government has invested an additional £165 million a year to improve maternity and neonatal care, which will rise to £186 million a year this year.