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 tackle labour shortages in the social care sector.

A national recruitment campaign for adult social care will be launched in the autumn. We are also providing free and fast-track disclosure and barring service checks for staff recruited in response to the pandemic and promoting of adult social care careers in Job Centres.

We will invest at least £500 million across three years in social care workforce professionalisation and development, wellbeing and mental health support, which will support retention of staff in the sector. We continue to work closely with the sector to understand how we can further support recruitment and retention.