Asked by: Julian Knight (Independent - Solihull)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many staff left his Department in each year since 2015.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The below table shows the civilian outflow from MOD Main Top Level Budgetary areas (TLB) and Trading Fund and Executive Agencies, by financial year, since 2014/2015.
Financial Year | Number |
2014-15 | 6,563 |
2015-16 | 5,566 |
2016-17 | 4,564 |
2017-18 | 4,553 |
2018-19 | 4,812 |
2019-20 | 5,727 |
2020-21 | 3,758 |
2021-22 | 5,903 |
2022-23 | 6,023 |
1 April 2023 – 30 September 2023 | 2,998 |
This information, along with full statistical analysis on the strength of MOD civilian personnel, is publicly available in the MOD biannual civilian personnel reports published by the Office for National Statistics on gov.uk at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/mod-biannual-civilian-personnel-statisticsindex
Data for the 2023-24 financial year will be published on 16 May 2024.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her department is taking to improve retention rates of NHS maternity staff.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out how to improve culture and leadership, to ensure that up to 130,000 fewer staff leave the National Health Service 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. These measures apply across staff groups, including maternity staff.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of maternity staff leaving NHS employment on services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department works with NHS England on a regular basis to review the numbers of staff working in National Health Service maternity services, and to identify any issues which could potentially impact services.
Growing, retaining, and supporting the maternity workforce to ensure that there are staff with the capacity and the right skills to deliver safe, personalised, and equitable care for women and babies is a key theme of NHS England’s Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services. NHS England is also delivering a nursing and midwifery retention programme, supporting organisations in assessing themselves against a bundle of interventions aligned to the NHS People Promise, and to develop high-quality local retention improvement plans.
Asked by: John Whittingdale (Conservative - Maldon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps he has taken to help recruit and retain police officers.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
We delivered our commitment to recruit 20,000 additional police officers. There are now over 149,000 officers in England and Wales, higher than the previous peak in 2010. Forces have been fully funded to maintain this uplift.
Retention is a key priority. Voluntary resignation rates, at around 3%, are low compared to other sectors and 72% of new recruits say they intend to stay until retirement.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding NHS England plans to allocate to Integrated Care Boards for local GP retention schemes for 2024-25; and through what mechanism that funding will be allocated following the closure of the General Practice Fellowship and the Supporting Mentors schemes.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In 2022, we saw the highest ever number of doctors accepting a place on general practice (GP) training, a record of 4,032 trainees, up from 2,671 in 2014.
From April 2024, integrated care boards (ICBs) will take on greater autonomy to make decisions that serve the best interests of local people and communities. This means that, while the General Practice Fellowship and Supporting Mentors schemes will no longer operate in their current national form, NHS England will work with ICBs to put in place support that reflects their local approaches and needs. It will be for ICBs to decide how funding operates at a local level, and the amount of funding they are able to devote to the schemes. NHS England will, however, continue to support people currently on the General Practice Fellowship throughout 2024/25, and ministers will shortly be beginning a series of roundtables with GPs on the future for GP practice, that will also consider ideas for retention and training.
Asked by: Neil Hudson (Conservative - Penrith and The Border)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help increase staff retention in the veterinary sector.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra is aware of the challenges facing the veterinary sector, including retention of qualified veterinary surgeons. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, as the regulator for the veterinary profession, published its Workforce Action Plan in 2022 to progress issues of recruitment, retention and return. Defra works closely with the RCVS on issues concerning the veterinary profession and continues to keep reform of the Veterinary Surgeons Act, where amendments might support increases in recruitment and retention, under review.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he has taken to help increase the retention rate of staff in HM Prison and Probation Service.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Safe, decent, rehabilitative prisons require excellent and experienced staff, as does supervising offenders in the community to keep the public safe.
We want them to stay in the Prison Service and to support retention, we have:
Accepted every penny of the Prisons Service PRB pay recommendations for 2023/24.
Injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year since 2021 to support Probation staff to deliver more robust supervision.
Rolled out BWV to every officer, to help protect staff by defusing volatile situations.
Introduced a New Colleague Mentor scheme to help new recruits feel supported in their early weeks and months.
Retention for prison officers is improving, with the staff resignation rate dropping from around 10.7% to around 8.3% over the last year to December 2023.
Asked by: Gen Kitchen (Labour - Wellingborough)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to increase levels of armed forces recruitment and retention.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 19 January 2024 to Question 9841 to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis).
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make a comparative assessment of the adequacy of recruitment and retention strategies for armed forces personnel in (a) the UK and (B) other NATO countries.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 19 January 2024 to Question 9841 to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis).
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to improve levels of GP retention.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care, published by NHS England in May 2023, sets out actions to cut bureaucracy and workload, which includes reducing demands of general practice (GP) time from unnecessary or low-value asks, improving the interface between primary and secondary care, and significantly streamlining the Impact and Investment Fund by reducing the number of indicators from 36 to five in 2023/24.
We are working with NHS England to increase the GP workforce in England. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession, and encourage them to return to practice. NHS England has made available a number of recruitment and retention schemes to boost the GP workforce. This includes the National GP Induction and Refresher scheme, the Return to Practice programme, and the International Induction Programme.
Through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS), Primary Care Networks and practices have recruited over 36,000 additional staff including nursing associates, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and social prescribing link workers, hitting the Government's target to recruit 26,000 a year, ahead of the March 2024 deadline. The expanded primary care teams funded through the ARRS not only add extra clinical capacity, helping to reduce the burden on GPs, but also form the basis for multi-disciplinary teams to work on improving the care offered to patients.