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 improve the diversity of healthcare leadership.

The NHS People Plan sets out targeted action to tackle discrimination and promote equality, including overhauling recruitment and promotion practices to increase representation at senior levels and reducing the disproportionate number of minority ethnic people entering the disciplinary process. The Government accepted the seven recommendations made in the recent Health and Social Care Review. This includes embedding inclusive leadership practice as the responsibility of all leaders, enforcing existing equal opportunity and fairness measures, such as increasing the representation of ethnic minority staff at senior levels and enhancing the role of the Care Quality Commission to improve outcomes.