Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect on the quality of patient care of gaps in rotas for higher speciality trainees in hospitals in the West Midlands.
Responsibility for staffing levels, including the specialty staff, rests with individual National Health Service trusts and their boards who are best placed to decide how many staff they need to provide a given service.
Rotas and any gaps are managed and quality assured by trusts, supported by NHS Improvement and assessed by the Care Quality Commission.
Training programme fill rates vary from specialty to specialty.