Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to (a) help improve recruitment to London Ambulance Service and (b) protect retention levels for London Ambulance Service staff.

In addition to the funding allocated to the London Ambulance Service (LAS) in the first half of this year, the service will receive an additional £30 million to meet increased demand. LAS is implementing a workforce programme which includes increasing the number of frontline staff by 400 whole time equivalents through recruitment and retention activity.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have provided ambulance trusts with an extra £55 million to increase staff numbers to supplement capacity in control rooms and the frontline and has invested £1.75 million to support the wellbeing of ambulance staff.