Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase recruitment to speciality training in the NHS.

For those who applied to begin training in 2022, Health Education England invested in more than 750 additional training posts across all programmes. For posts commencing in August 2022, 7,894 doctors accepted posts with a fill rate of 99.7%.

In January 2022, the Department commissioned NHS England to develop a long-term workforce plan. The plan will consider the number of staff and the roles required and will set out the actions and reforms needed to improve workforce supply and retention. The plan is due for completion by the end of 2022 and its conclusions will be available in due course. Funding plans beyond the current Spending Review period will be subject to the outcome of future Spending Reviews.