Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps are being taken to fill vacancies in the NHS.

The NHS professionally qualified clinical workforce grew by 5.8% between May 2010 – May 2017 (including over 11,600 more doctors and over 2,800 more nurses).

However we are not complacent and are taking urgent steps to reduce the number of vacancies in the NHS, including:

- increasing the number of medical training places by 1,500 a year from September 2018;

- £16.4 million of additional funding to enable an increase in the number of clinical placements available across the NHS;

- increasing the number of routes in to practice through the use of apprenticeships; and

- increasing the rate of retention for key staff groups.

Health Education England’s Workforce Plan for 2016/171 sets out how we will ensure that the NHS has a workforce with the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours to meet the needs of patients.

Note:

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