Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to increase the number of NHS staff providing rheumatology care in (a) North West London and (b) England.

We continue to grow the National Health Service workforce and as of March 2023 there are over 12,900 more nurses and over 5,400  more doctors compared with 12 months earlier.   We are on target to meet the 50,000 nurses’ commitment, with over 44,000 more nurses in March 2023 than there were in September 2019.

We are working with NHS England to develop workforce plans for our integrated care systems that link to national initiatives, including recruitment programmes for general practitioners, healthcare support workers, nurses and allied health professionals. We have also commissioned NHS England to produce a long term workforce plan, which will be published shortly.