Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many training places for midwifery were (a) commissioned and (b) filled in each of the last two years.

Health Education England (HEE) made 2,605 midwifery training places available in England in the 2016-17 academic year, with 2,602 of these places filled. The reforms for healthcare education funding from August 2017 mean students have moved onto the student loans system for 2017-18; giving universities the flexibility to provide additional places, based on local need and National Health Service clinical capacity. Health Education England will continue to fund the required number of clinical placements to meet the longer-term NHS workforce needs. Based on the latest un-validated data HEE expect 2,692 training places to be filled in England in 2017-18.

The Government has committed to increasing the number of available midwifery training places in England by more than 3,000 over a four year period from 2019. The increase in available places will start in the 2019 academic year, with an additional 650 training places with increases of 1,000 in the subsequent years.