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 improve retention of the NHS workforce.

Retention within the National Health Service is a complex issue and decisions to leave are taken for a multitude of reasons. The NHS People Plan and the People Promise focus on improving the retention of NHS staff by prioritising staff health and wellbeing. We have set out a comprehensive range of actions to improve staff retention which focus on creating a more modern, compassionate and inclusive NHS culture by strengthening health and wellbeing, equality and diversity, culture and leadership and flexible working.

Building on this work, the NHS Retention Programme seeks to understand why staff leave, resulting in targeted interventions to support staff to stay whilst keeping them well. To bolster current support, each NHS organisation is prioritising the delivery of five high impact actions that will impact on early-career, experienced and late-career staff, improving the experience and retention of nursing and midwifery staff.