To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to help tackle shortages of (a) consultants and (b) other NHS staff.

We continue to grow the National Health Service workforce. As of February 2023, there has been an increase of 1,689 full-time equivalent (FTE) consultants and over 12,300 more nurses than the same time last year. We are on track to deliver 50,000 more nurses across the NHS by 2024 and have almost 43,000 more nurses in February 2023 compared with September 2019.

The Government has funded an additional 1,500 undergraduate medical school places per year for domestic students in England, a 25% increase, taking the total number of medical school places in England to 7,500 each year.

Furthermore, a number of actions have been taken to retain NHS staff through the NHS People Plan and the People Promise pledge to build a more modern, compassionate and inclusive culture in the NHS to improve people’s experience of working in the NHS, and the retention of staff.

To support the workforce as a whole we have commissioned NHS England to develop a long term workforce plan for the NHS workforce for the next 15 years. This plan will help ensure that we have the right numbers of staff, with the right skills to transform and deliver high quality services fit for the future.