Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will provide incentives to improve the retention rates of NHS staff prior to their retirement to support the development of skills in the NHS workforce.

Retaining staff late-stage career is important, particularly as a third of the National Health Service workforce are aged 50 years old and over and have a wealth of skills, experience and knowledge. The national NHS Retention Programme is continuously seeking to understand why staff leave, resulting in targeted interventions to support staff to stay whilst keeping them well.

One of the many areas of focus has been supporting later career stage staff to consider different options to stay. This has been enabled through numerous interventions, for example, legacy mentoring, where mentors in the later stages of their career bring share their experience with the next generation, flexible working, guidance for retaining doctors in late-stage careers, a menopause support programme and pensions reforms.