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 adequacy of the availability of qualified healthcare scientists in areas where there is a backlog in fitting hearing aids to patients; and whether he plans to take steps to increase the level of recruitment of those qualified healthcare scientists.

No assessment has been made. It is the responsibility of individual National Health Service employers to ensure appropriate staffing levels and recruit the number of staff required to meet service need.

To support the workforce as a whole we have commissioned NHS England to develop a long term workforce plan, including projections for the numbers of doctors, nurses, and other key professionals required over the next five, ten and fifteen years. The plan is for the whole of the NHS workforce; it will not provide detailed workforce assessments for individual services or for every staff group.