Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many and what proportion of NHS trusts have conducted a review their maternity workforce needs in each year since 2010.

The Department does not have information about the proportion or numbers of reviews that have taken place.

Health Education England is responsible for maintaining midwifery-training numbers at a sufficient level to meet service demand. As part of their workforce planning process, all local maternity service providers should work with their Local Education and Training Boards to review their workforce requirements each year to inform the commissioning of training places and ensure services are tailored to local needs.

Currently,there are 21,881 qualified full time equivalent midwives, an increase of 8.7% since May 2010 and a record 6,000 in training.