Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they last discussed progress on their pledge to recruit 50,000 new nurses into the NHS by 2024 with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN); and what assessment they have made of the concerns expressed by the RCN over the lack of transparent publication of workforce data.

The Department has held recent discussions with the Royal College of Nurses on this commitment. NHS Digital’s monthly workforce statistics include a headline measure for progress towards recruiting 50,000 nurses and a range of other detail. The data complies with the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics, which promotes the production and dissemination of official statistics that inform decision making.