Roger Godsiff – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Roger Godsiff on 2015-10-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government plans to take to ensure that sufficient doctors and nurses are trained in the UK to maintain safe staffing levels in the NHS.

Ben Gummer

The Government has established Health Education England (HEE) as the body responsible for workforce planning and the commissioning of education and training for the National Health Service and public health system with a budget of £4.9 billion.

The number of nurse training places has increased by 14% over the past three years, with currently over 50,000 nurses in training as at 31 March 2015.

HEE is forecasting that, based on their current training plans, there will be 23,121 more nurses available to work in the NHS by 2019 compared to 2014.

There are currently near record numbers of nurses and midwives in post in the NHS in England. The latest available figures from June 2015 show a total of 317,595 nurses and midwives in post.

Since May 2010, the number of doctors in the NHS has increased by 8,574 to just under 104,000.