Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential causes of (a) unemployment and (b) underemployment among qualified healthcare professionals.

Decisions about recruitment are matters for individual National Health Service trusts. NHS trusts manage their recruitment at a local level, ensuring they have the right number of staff in place, with the right skill mix, to deliver safe and effective care. That said, the Government finds it unacceptable that trained professionals are struggling to find jobs when the health system has been overworked for years. Working with NHS England, we are committed to recruiting the staff we need to get patients seen on time.

The NHS and universities can work to become anchor institutions across all our local areas, not just to drive employment opportunities through training for a career in the NHS and social care, but where we collectively work to drive growth in our economy.

Data on the number of unemployed and underemployed healthcare professionals is not held centrally. The Government has committed to recruiting over 1,000 recently qualified general practitioners (GPs) through an £82 million boost to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) over 2024/25, as part of an initiative to address GP unemployment and secure the future pipeline of GPs.

We are investing an additional £889 million through the GP Contract to reinforce the front door of the NHS, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.2 billion in 2025/26. This is the biggest increase in over a decade.

Under recently announced changes to the GP Contract, in 2025/26 the ARRS will become more flexible, to allow primary care networks to respond better to local workforce needs. The two ARRS pots will be combined to create a single pot for the reimbursement of patient facing staff costs. There will be no restrictions on the number or type of staff covered, including GPs and practice nurses.