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 address the shortage of clinicians working in the prison system; and what impact the shortage of clinicians has on whether inmates receive timely medical attention.

Both the Department and NHS England recognise the impact that clinical staff shortages can have on the timeliness of prisoners receiving medical attention.

NHS England’s national health and justice inclusive workforce programme was created to improve the recruitment and retention of a larger, more diverse, inclusive, and representative workforce for all health and justice services and programmes. It provides a wide range of resources to support the regions and providers to increase recruitment and improve retention, as well as various initiatives to address some of the barriers to employment in prison healthcare. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/health-just/the-health-and-justice-inclusive-workforce-programme/

NHS England’s nursing directorate is also undertaking work around nurse perceptions, which is targeted at the future workforce, 11 to 18 year olds, and which includes prison nurses.