Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the updated NHS workforce plan will include measures to improve access to permanent NHS employment for newly qualified nurses and nursing associates.

We will not pre-empt the publication of the plan which will be published shortly and will set out how the National Health Service workforce will be put on a sustainable footing so it can deliver the service model set out in the 10-Year Health Plan. The plan will not simply be a numbers exercise, it will focus on skills, deployment, and productivity, enabling the delivery of better care for patients and better jobs for staff.

We are improving workforce planning to align job vacancies with the anticipated supply of graduating students through a student movement dashboard enabling regional NHS England teams, universities, and employers to understand where future vacancies will arise and signpost newly graduated students towards these roles.