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 increase the number of pharmacists working within rheumatology services.

Rheumatology services are all locally commissioned by integrated care boards who are best placed to make decisions according to local need. Current education and training initiatives for pharmacists support pharmacists to develop the skills and knowledge to delivery high quality clinical services to patients in all sectors. In addition, commissioned through NHS England, the Centre for Post Graduate Pharmacy Education offers a range of upskilling offers for pharmacy professionals including a musculoskeletal training programme. NHS England is funding 3,000 independent prescribing training places for pharmacists in England in 2023/24, and these are open to Pharmacists working in Rheumatology services.

The number of pharmacy training places annually is uncapped. In England, each year around 2,500 pharmacists enter training and the net increase in pharmacists practicing across all sectors has increased by around 1,400 per year since 2016.

The Government has committed to publishing the Long Term Workforce Plan shortly. This will include projections for the number of doctors, nurses and other professionals that will be needed, taking full account of improvements in retention and productivity. The plan will provide estimates of NHS workforce as a whole; however, it will not get into detail about condition-specific workforce, such as for rheumatology.