Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the number of midwives.

We will publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan which will deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, to ensure that the National Health Service has the right people, including midwives, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need, when they need it.

Targeted retention work for midwives is being undertaken by NHS England, led by the Chief Nursing Officer. This work contains a range of measures, including the creation of a midwifery and nursing retention self-assessment tool, mentoring schemes, strengthened advice and support on pensions, and embedding flexible retirement options. NHS England has also invested in unit-based retention leads which, alongside investment in workforce capacity, has seen a reduction in vacancy, leaver, and turnover rates. NHS England is also boosting the midwifery workforce through undergraduate training, apprenticeships, postgraduate conversion, and return to midwifery programmes.