Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the recruitment and training of essential non-clinical professionals including (1) digital product developers, (2) data scientists, (3) systems architects, and (4) project and change managers, to support the transformation of health and care services.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. It will put the workforce on a sustainable footing for the long term. We have committed to refreshing the modelling that underpins the plan every two years or in line with fiscal events to ensure that assessments of staff remain accurate against wider operational, financial, and educational planning needs.

At a local level, NHS organisations are best placed to determine their own recruitment needs, informed by their workforce, service and financial planning and ensuring there is sufficient skilled workforce around project and change management, digital product developers, data scientists and systems architects.