Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the recent We are the NHS recruitment campaign, for what reasons speech and language therapists are not among the roles being recruited.

The National Health Service recruitment campaign ‘We are the NHS’, targets those allied health Professional roles in England, most in need based on the NHS Long Term Plan and interim NHS People Plan and those in hard to fill roles. It is for the devolved administrations in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to decide on their recruitment needs and how they go about securing their workforce

The NHS People Plan, due to be published by the NHS in 2020, will set out a clear framework for growing and sustaining a well-skilled workforce across the whole NHS in England. At November 2019 there were 6,284 full time equivalent speech and language therapists in England, this is a 5% increase since 2016.

In December 2019 the Government announced additional maintenance grant funding of at least £5,000 per academic year for students studying nursing, midwifery and most allied health professions, including speech and language therapy, which will be available from September 2020 for new and continuing students at English universities. In addition, students with child dependents will benefit from an extra £1,000.