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 support the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of General Practice Nurses.

The Government has committed to increasing the primary care workforce. We are on track to reach 50,000 additional nurses, with over 46,000 more nurses in July 2023 compared with September 2019, including nurses in general practice. We are working to achieve the 50,000 nurses target by improving retention as well as by diversifying our training pipeline and ethically recruiting internationally.

In July 2022, Chief Nursing Officer Ruth May and Em Wilkinson-Brice, National Director of People at NHS England, wrote to trusts to set out the principles and high impact actions that will support the retention of nurses and midwives.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out the ambition to increase adult nursing training places by 92%, taking the number of total places up to nearly 38,000 by 2031/32. To support this ambition, we will increase training places to nearly 28,000 in 2028/29.