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 improve retention rates for doctors.

As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, the Government is committed to making the National Health Service the best place to work, by supporting and retaining our hardworking and dedicated healthcare professionals. We will publish a 10 Year Workforce Plan later in 2025 setting out how we will ensure staff are better treated, have better training, more fulfilling roles and hope for the future, so they can achieve more.

We will work with the Social Partnership Forum to introduce a new set of staff standards for modern employment, covering issues such as access to healthy meals, support to work healthily and flexibly, and tackling violence, racism and sexual harassment in the workplace.

We have made significant progress over the past year to improve the working lives of resident doctors. This includes agreeing an improved exception reporting system which will ensure doctors are compensated fairly for the additional work that they do and reviewing how resident doctors rotate through their training.

NHS England is leading work nationally through its retention programme to drive a consistent, system-wide approach to staff retention across NHS trusts.