Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve the matching of newly qualified clinicians to vacancies across the NHS.

Responsibility for staffing levels rests with individual National Health Service trusts and their boards who are best placed to decide how many staff they need to provide a given service, taking into account skill mix, efficiency and the needs of their local population.

This Government has undertaken much work to increase the number of trained doctors and nurses to ensure that the NHS can continue to deliver safe, compassionate and effective care well into the future. Over recent months the NHS has seen record numbers of doctors and nurses.

Clinician posts are located to meet patient and service demands and, to comply with employment law, competition for such posts is through fair and open competition. Both the Department and Health Education England have been working to ensure pre-qualification training places are distributed fairly across the country to meet future demand for trained clinical staff.