Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS maternity units have not appointed a retention midwife.

We do not hold data on the number of retention midwives in National Health Service maternity units.

The midwifery retention programme has been underpinned by the People Promise values which has focussed on early careers, staff experience and late careers. The programme has taken an evidence-based approach to scaling up good practice and continuous improvement through the delivery of an education and learning platform.

The Long Term Workforce Plan builds on the People Promise and the People Plan and sets out how to improve culture and leadership to ensure that up to 130,000 fewer staff leave the NHS over the next 15 years. This includes: implementing actions from the NHS People Plan that have been shown to be successful; implementing plans to improve flexible opportunities for prospective retirees and delivering the actions needed to modernise the NHS pension scheme; and committing to ongoing national funding for continuing professional development for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, so NHS staff are supported to meet their full potential.