Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the provision of rheumatology care in Buckinghamshire in the last (a) 12 and (b) 24 months.

No assessment has been made. Rheumatology services are generally commissioned locally by integrated care boards which have a statutory responsibility to commission healthcare services that meet the needs of their whole population.

The Government has committed to publishing the Long-Term Workforce Plan shortly. This will include projections for the number of doctors, nurses and other professionals that will be needed. The plan will provide estimates of NHS workforce as a whole; however, it will not go into detail about condition-specific workforce, such as for rheumatology. The recruitment of staff for multi-disciplinary rheumatology teams is for local determination.