Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has had discussions with relevant stakeholders on trends in the number of (a) nurse and (b) pharmaceutical staff vacancies within the (i) quality assurance and (ii) governance disclipines of homecare medicines services.

NHS England’s Commercial Medicines Unit, which manages the national framework agreements for the provision of homecare medicines services, holds regular engagement meetings with providers on the framework and when appropriate will discuss recruitment and retention of staff. The National Homecare Medicines Committee also holds discussions regarding recruitment, retention and vacancies during engagement meetings with providers when appropriate to do so.