Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to increase the number of NHS (a) vascular surgeons and (b) interventional radiologists.

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.

Interventional radiology is a sub-specialty of clinical radiology. HEE increased the number of clinical radiology training programmes by 35 in 2017, which will lead to 35 additional clinical radiology posts each year for the next five years.

Vascular surgery is not included within the Cancer Workforce Plan but the combined general and vascular surgery consultant workforce is projected to continue to grow at current levels (averaging 4.4% from 2012 to 2018).

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