Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to provide skills training to help meet (a) medium- and (b) long-term targets for biomedical scientists in the NHS.

As set out in the recently published NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan, we aim to increase training places for healthcare scientists, including biomedical scientists, by 13% to more than 850 places by 2028/29, putting us on the path to increase training places by more than 30% to over 1,000 places by 2031/32.

Apprenticeship routes for healthcare scientists are also being made available, with 20% of training places delivered via an apprenticeship route by 2028/29, supporting an ambition to have 40% of healthcare scientists starting their training via an apprenticeship by 2031/32.

The Government is backing the plan with over £2.4 billion over the next five years.