Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to include the mutual recognition of mandatory training qualifications between NHS Trusts in the forthcoming NHS Workforce Strategy.

As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we are committed to reforming mandatory training by April 2026, to ease the burden on frontline staff and to allow a more flexible approach to workforce development.

NHS England is already leading work to optimise, rationalise, and redesign statutory and mandatory training. This includes reducing the duplication of training when staff move organisation or rotate through their training programme. The mutual recognition agreement has already been signed by 262 National Health Service organisations across England and went live on 1 May 2025, so it is in place and is expected to continue to reduce the unnecessary burden on staff.

The next stage of the reform work will see a new competency framework published that will fundamentally reform current training, further reducing the burden of unnecessary training, and focus on building the competence to improve the quality of services and safety across the NHS workforce.