Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the number of cancer clinical nurse specialist vacancies in the NHS.

NHS Improvement collects vacancy data for three staff groups; doctors, nurses and ‘other staff’. These vacancy statistics are published for England and at the regional level of North, Midlands and East, London and South.

NHS Digital published the latest NHS Improvement vacancy data which can be found at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-vacancies-survey/february-2015---march-2019-provisional-experimental-statistics

The large majority of vacancies are filled by a combination of bank and agency staff.