Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the forthcoming NHS People Plan will take account of the barriers and challenges faced by NHS staff in charge of providing vital vascular services; and if he will make a statement.

The final NHS People Plan will build on the ambitions in the interim NHS People Plan by setting out a workforce strategy for the National Health Service that will enable the service to deliver the NHS Long Term Plan across all clinical areas, including vascular, by addressing the challenges that staff currently face.

In developing the People Plan, the NHS has worked with a range of partner organisations to put people issues at the heart of service transformation and support creative new approaches to service and workforce design that will allow us to use our existing resources better and deliver better care for patients.

The NHS People Plan will help improve leadership culture with a focus on education and training, including introducing new routes into the NHS and improving workforce planning and supporting interventions that will release staff time for care. This will include, for example, encouraging advanced practice in radiology departments which play an important role in delivering high quality vascular services.

It is expected that the final NHS People Plan will be published in early 2020.