Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, which specialist areas of medicine are experiencing shortages of (a) consultants and (b) registrars; and how many vacancies there are in those disciplines.

The information is not available in the format requested.

Health Education England (HEE) provide estimates of staff shortages as part of their Workforce Plan for England publication. Staff shortages as defined by HEE may be filled by staff working in Agency, Bank or overtime, however no estimate of the extent to which this occurs is available.

The latest figures are available at the following link:

hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Workforce%20Plan%20for%20England%202016-17.pdf

HEE plan to publish the Workforce Plan for England 2017/18 in due course.