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 ensure the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of adequate levels of NHS staff in cancer pathology units.

Health Education England (HEE) published the Cancer Workforce Plan for England in December 2017, which committed to the expansion of capacity and skills of the cancer workforce, including an ambition to attract and retain more cancer specialists, including histopathologists, by 2021. In 2019, 100% of specialist pathology training places, including histopathology, were filled.

Following the publication of the NHS Long Term Plan in January 2019, HEE is now working with NHS England and NHS Improvement to understand the longer-term workforce implications for the further development of cancer services.

Locally, responsibility for assessing and managing staffing levels, including specialty staff, rests with individual NHS trusts who are best placed to decide how many staff they need to provide a given service.