Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department's long term strategy is to attract, recruit and retain neurology professionals.

This Government is committed to supporting staff and investing in the wider neurological workforce, including nurses and allied health professionals. The NHS People Plan, published in July 2020, sets out measures to support and grow the workforce and strengthen retention in the NHS. We have set up a comprehensive work programme to improve retention and support return to practice, invest in and diversify our training pipeline, and ethically recruit internationally.

Health Education England (HEE) determines the number of medical specialty training posts that are made available each year based on considerations including spending review allocations, strategic priorities for training the medical workforce and an annual process whereby local teams submit recruitment plans for specialty training programmes. Neurology is a popular specialty and generally achieves 100% fill rate for training places.

In July 2021 the Department commissioned HEE to work with partners to review, renew and update the existing long-term strategic framework for the health workforce.