Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to fill vacant diagnostic positions in the NHS.

In the Cancer Workforce Plan for England which was published in December 2017, Health Education England (HEE) set out the case for the need to target additional training support for clinical radiology, histopathology, oncology and diagnostic and therapeutic radiography.

HEE will consider whether further action is required to increase supply beyond 2021 in the light of the longer-term health and care workforce strategy which is expected to be published by the end of this year.

Locally, responsibility for assessing and managing staffing levels, including specialty staff, rests with individual National Health Service trusts and their boards who are best placed to decide how many staff they need to provide a given service.