Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to increase the number of midwives working in the NHS over the next five years.

Health Education England (HEE) has a key role in helping to improve the quality of care by ensuring our National Health Service workforce has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to meet the needs of patients. Their workforce planning process sets out the £5 billion worth of investments HEE will make in education and training programmes in England.

HEE published their second workforce plan in December 2014. The plan sets out detail of the numbers of midwives they plan to train. For 2015/16, HEE plan to increase midwife training numbers by 1.6% to 2,605.

HEE’s national workforce plan for England is an aggregate of Local Education and Training Boards’ plans with the advice and input of clinical advisors, patient representatives, the Royal Colleges and other stakeholders. These local and national discussions are the basis for planning and developing the workforce for the NHS in England to ensure that there is a suitable supply of health professionals, including midwives. HEE undertake workforce planning on an annual basis.