The Department does not collect this information.

NHS England is investing in initiatives to improve access to general practice as part of the GP Five Year Forward View. This includes access to all routine appointments, including cervical screening, at evenings and/or weekends.

Local authorities are responsible for commissioning public health services in their areas, which includes commissioning of sexual health clinics.

Plans are well underway to deliver the commitment in the NHS Long Term Plan to modernise the bowel cancer screening programme; faecal immunochemical testing at 120ug/g will be integrated into the programme from April 2019.

NHS England has committed to, over time, lowering the starting age for bowel screening from 60 currently to 50. This is being discussed by NHS England, the Department and Public Health England, and the final timetable will take into account modelling and feedback received from the system (commissioners, providers and cancer alliances).

For a safe, sustainable and high-quality service extended to age 50 years, there is a requirement to balance workforce requirements for the current commitments and Health Education England has pledged to fund the training of 400 clinical endoscopists by 2021 to significantly increase endoscopy capacity in England.

NHS England and Health Education England (HEE) are working together with the profession to increase the general practitioner (GP) workforce. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why GPs are leaving the profession, and encourage GPs to return to practice.

To encourage GPs to work in areas of the country identified as hard to recruit, NHS England and Health Education England have funded the Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme. The scheme funds a £20,000 salary supplement for GP trainees who commit to spending their three years of speciality training in areas of the country where GP training places have been unfilled for a number of years. There were 122 places in 2016, 144 in 2017 and 265 in 2018. In 2019 a further 276 places have been made available.

There are currently no plans to assess the potential merits of introducing a general practitioner (GP) university tuition fee remission scheme.

NHS England and Health Education England (HEE) are working together with the profession to increase the GP workforce. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why GPs are leaving the profession, and encourage GPs to return to practice.

To encourage GPs to work in areas of the country identified as hard to recruit, NHS England and Health Education England have funded the Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme. The scheme funds a £20,000 salary supplement for GP trainees who commit to spending their three years of speciality training in areas of the country where GP training places have been unfilled for a number of years. There were 122 places in 2016, 144 in 2017 and 265 in 2018. In 2019 a further 276 places are being made available.

The independent General Practice Partnership Review, led by Dr Nigel Watson, which is due to report in early 2019, has given consideration to how to ensure general practice and the partnership model remain attractive for early-career GPs, including the provision of incentives such as additional development opportunities and support for this group.

The interim report of the review is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gp-partnership-review-interim-report

The number of general practitioner (GP) vacancies in Witham constituency and Essex is not collected or held centrally. This data is only published at a national level.

Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), has advised that it recognises that GP availability is challenging and it has therefore funded recruitment of other clinical roles in primary care, such as paramedics, to support practices in Witham and elsewhere.

Getting the skills mix right in general practice is critical in addressing workload pressures as well as in delivering appropriate patient care. This will mean bigger teams of staff, providing a wider range of care options for patients and freeing up more time for GPs to focus on those with more complex needs. The CCG has advised that it is working with its member practices, including those in Witham, to reflect this national priority. Practices have the discretion within their contracts to decide the staff skill mix required to meet their patient populations’ needs.

The CCG and colleagues across the Mid and South Essex Sustainability and Transformation Partnership have advised they are also focusing on European Union and international GP recruitment and are supporting GPs in accessing the GP retention scheme. They have also advised that they are supporting the development of the School of Medicine at Anglia Ruskin University and are working in partnership with the Essex Primary Care Inter-professional Centre around a localised clinical recruitment service called Essex Primary Care Careers.

The Department does not hold the information requested on the number of vacancies within the discipline of radiology and trained and experienced breast radiology staff.

Health Education England (HEE) published its first ever Cancer Workforce Plan in December 2017, which commits to the expansion of capacity and skills including an ambition to increase improved working practices, attracting qualified people back to the National Health Service through domestic and international recruitment. This will include 668 more, full time equivalent, clinical radiologists and investing in 300 reporting radiographers by 2021 to support an increase in the capacity for earlier diagnosis.

HEE intends to follow the plan later this year with a longer-term strategy that looks at the workforce needs beyond 2021. This will include exploring sustainable growth beyond 2021 in key professions through continued investment in training places, with a greater focus on attracting and retaining students and improving the numbers of qualified professionals who go on to work in the NHS.

Ministers meet with NHS leaders, including the National Cancer Director, and Health Education England on a regular basis to discuss a wide range of issues, including how we can assure that the NHS has the workforce it needs to ensure that cancer patients have fast access to diagnostic services.

In 2017, Professor Jane Cummings, the Chief Nursing Officer for England announced a career development programme was being developed for General Practice Nurses (GPNs). This programme took the form of an ‘action plan’ to recognise and develop the GPN role in transforming care and helping to deliver the National Health Service plan. The plan was published in 2017 and entitled The GPN 10 Point Plan. The GPN 10 Point plan uses an investment of £15 million from the GP Forward View funding allocation to support actions which will address the significant workforce challenges and support improvements in general practice nursing by 2020.

Getting the skills mix right in general practice is critical in addressing workload pressures as well as in delivering appropriate patient care. This will mean bigger teams of staff, including nurse practitioners providing a wider range of care options for patients and freeing up more time for general practitioners to focus on those with more complex needs.

Health Education England published its first ever Cancer Workforce Plan in December 2017, which commits to the expansion of capacity and skills including an ambition to increase improved working practices, attracting qualified people back to the National Health Service through domestic and international recruitment. This will include 200 additional clinical endoscopists (in addition to 200 already committed to), 316 more gastroenterologists and 94 full time equivalent additional histopathologists to support an increase in the capacity for earlier diagnosis.

In the Cancer Workforce Plan for England which was published in December 2017, Health Education England (HEE) set out the case for the need to target additional training support for clinical radiology, histopathology, oncology and diagnostic and therapeutic radiography.

HEE will consider whether further action is required to increase supply beyond 2021 in the light of the longer-term health and care workforce strategy which is expected to be published by the end of this year.

Locally, responsibility for assessing and managing staffing levels, including specialty staff, rests with individual National Health Service trusts and their boards who are best placed to decide how many staff they need to provide a given service.

This information is not held centrally.

This information is not held centrally.

NHS England has a legal duty to commission National Health Service primary care dental services to meet local needs.

NHS England contracts with dental providers to provide NHS care. Contract holders are then responsible for the recruitment of any other dentists needed to fulfil the contract requirements. This includes the remuneration offered to any associate dentists they recruit.

NHS England advises that it has recently been getting reports from some providers of difficulties in recruiting and retaining dentists particularly in more remote areas. NHS England is working with local commissioners to investigate how widespread this is and is keeping the issue under active review.

The figures for numbers of general practitioner (GP) to patients in the areas highlighted are set out in the table below.

The Department and NHS England established a scheme to recruit GPs to ‘hard to recruit’ areas. Other support being provided to encourage GPs to remain in the National Health Service includes the GP Career Plus and the GP Retention Scheme. In addition, the National GP Induction and Refresher Scheme helps GPs back into the NHS.

By 2020 the Government has committed to 5,000 additional doctors in general practice, as part of a wider increase to the total workforce in general practice of 10,000.

The information is not available in the format requested.

In December Health Education England published a cancer workforce plan for England which sets out how the National Health Service will ensure it has access to the cancer workforce it needs to 2021. The cancer workforce plan is available at the following link:

www.hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Cancer%20Workforce%20Strategy%20Graphs%20and%20tables%20FINAL.pdf

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust continues to meet operational standards for providing cancer care to its patients. The most recent figures for Q2 2017/18 show:

- Two Week Wait from GP Urgent Referral to First Consultant Appointment: 96.9% (operational standard 95%);

- One Month Wait from a Decision to Treat to a First Treatment for Cancer: 97.0% (operational standard 95%); and

- Two Month Wait from GP Urgent Referral to a First Treatment for Cancer: 85.1% (operational standard 85%).

We are committed to improving the capability and capacity of the cancer workforce in England. Health Education England (HEE) published its first ever Cancer Workforce Plan on 5 December 2017, setting out plans to increase the numbers working in cancer care, speeding up diagnoses and treatment.

Macmillan Cancer Support are currently carrying out a Specialist Adult Cancer Nurse Census

to understand the current size and location of the specialist cancer nurse workforce. This will

enable HEE to develop a much more comprehensive picture of how many specialist nurses are working in cancer and what further action and investment might be required to ensure timely and good quality patient care and experience.

NHS England North Midlands confirmed that they received a total of six applications, of which three were shortlisted for interview. Two candidates attended an interview and one applicant withdrew.

The data on the number of vacancies in the National Health Service diagnostic workforce is not available centrally.

NHS Digital collects data on the number of advertised vacancies across the NHS. The NHS vacancy statistics for the period 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 shows there were 1,261 full-time equivalent vacancies with ‘diagnostic’ in the title.

The NHS is meeting six out of eight cancer waiting times standards (August 2017). This is despite 970,000 more people being urgently referred in 2016/17 compared to 2009/10 - an increase of 108%.

Specific work has been taking place on the recruitment of Clinical (non-medical) Endoscopists. Progress is on track to meet the target of 200 new non-medical Endoscopists by the end of 2018.

This work is taking place alongside a greater focus on the 62 day cancer waiting time target with investments in pathway coordinators and redesigned, quicker clinical pathways.

Public Health England, which leads the Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) screening programme, is working with Health Education England and others to understand the training and capacity demand deriving from the introduction of FIT in April 2018.

This information is not held centrally.

Health Education England provides estimates of staff shortages and the plan for tackling these issues as part of their Workforce Plan for England publication. The latest figures are available at the following link:

https://hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Workforce%20Plan%20for%20England%202016-17.pdf

NHS England does not collect centralised data on the average time to fill general practitioner (GP) vacancies, which varies significantly depending on area.

Clinical commissioning groups are currently working on strategies and plans to address recruitment issues which will vary from area to area. These plans will be reflective of the General Practice Forward View and national initiatives to support recruitment and retention.

Information on spending on locum doctors is not held centrally. GPs are independent contractors who have discretion on the number and type of staff they employ in their practices to assist in the delivery of primary medical services.

Data published by NHS Digital show that there were 430 full time equivalent general practitioner (GP) vacancies recorded in England over the period April 2016 to September 2016. This figure is based on responses from 866 practices out of a total 7,527 practices in England (11.5%).

Data on GP vacancies are not available for West Yorkshire or for North Kirklees.