Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

What assessment he has made of trends in the level of vacancies across the NHS.

Only a very small proportion of shifts are ever left vacant – where a substantive staff member is not in place, nurse leaders are able to utilise bank and agency staff to ensure they provide high quality care to their patients. There are now almost 42,700 more professionally qualified clinical staff working in the National Health Service since 2010, as well as almost 14,200 more nurses on our wards.