The Government’s mandate to Health Education England sets it a clear objective to ensure that the right numbers of staff, with the right values, skills and competencies, are being trained and developed to meet future needs. HEE will co-ordinate and perform a leadership role in making recommendations more broadly about health education and training and, just as we recognise that there is independence in much of what NHS England does, we anticipate similar independence in HEE’s role after the passage of the Bill.

It will be for Health Education England to take on board the views of different groups of providers, commissioners and the Royal Colleges to ensure that it comes up with robust proposals, based on its own evidence, for not just short-term, but medium and longer-term work force needs when developing its plan. Equally, as considerable public money is spent—for very good purpose, of course—on undergraduate training for many health care workers, it is important that we can see that supply and demand are closely aligned. For the first time, we will have what amounts to an independent body taking the short, medium and long-term view about work force education and training for the health service, which is a strong step forward and something of which we should all be proud.

Health Education England’s objective is to work through the local education training boards—LETBs, as they are often called—to lead a process of improved work force planning to ensure that sufficient staff are trained with the right skills and are available in the right locations to enable health care providers to deliver their commissioning plans. HEE will take a strategic role on those health care professions for which number controls are determined nationally, including medicine and dentistry. It will work with partners in the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Department of Health and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to determine the number and distribution of undergraduate places. Health Education England will consolidate local work force plans into a national five-year plan for England, which will be published and reviewed annually.

Amendments 162 and 164 focus on the need for integrated and long-term work force planning. I hope I can reassure the hon. Members for Copeland and for Leicester West that that is already provided for in the Bill as part of the scope of the work that Health Education England performs. Amendment 162 would require Health Education England to exercise its functions with a view to promoting inclusive health-related education and training for health care workers, and to ensuring that appropriate long-term planning is undertaken and that the supply of skilled workers is matched closely to demand for them.

I hope I can reassure hon. Members that the Government’s mandate to the Health Education England special health authority includes a specific objective for HEE to ensure that the principles of equality and diversity are integral to education, as we discussed previously, and that there is training and development across the NHS and the public health system. Those objectives will continue to apply to Health Education England when it becomes a non-departmental public body.

I entirely agree that it is fundamental that Health Education England undertakes long-term work force planning. It sometimes takes the best part of a decade or more to train a work force—certainly more than a decade if we look at some of the medical work force from the beginning of undergraduate training through to the completion of specialist training. That training can sometimes take a dozen or so years, so it is important that there is a longer-term view on work force planning. That was why we strengthened the Bill in the other place following feedback, consultation and the pre-legislative scrutiny carried out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam.

Clauses 98(5) and 104(3)(e) require HEE and LETBs to have regard to long-term objectives for work force planning and the delivery of education and training. Even if it was not explicit before, following the amendments we have made, and thanks to some excellent pre-legislative scrutiny from my right hon. Friend and further discussions in the other place, we have already strengthened the Bill to ensure that long-term work force planning is at the heart of what Health Education England does.

All work force planning—at national level by HEE, or locally by LETBs—should be based on a well-informed long-term work force strategy that looks at needs over the following five or 10 years—or beyond, when that is required. Health Education England special health authority published its first five-year plan for England in December 2013, and it is considering its longer-term strategy for the work force.

I am sure that members of the Committee will agree that it is not possible to set in primary legislation exact time frames regarding what work force plans should look like. We all recognise that the health care work force is diverse. It is a multidisciplinary work force. While it takes five or six years to train a medical undergraduate, the period of training for nursing or other disciplines may be a shorter. Postgraduate training for medical specialities—for example, very topically, the training of an A and E consultant—will take, following the completion of foundation training, a further six years. A GP requires three more years’ training after foundation training, while the training for obstetrics  and gynaecology involves another seven years. That period can be longer in some specialities if people undertake further sub-specialist training.

Owing to such variations, it is not desirable to set out in primary legislation exact time frames for work force planning. We have to recognise the important fact that time frames differ for various groups when developing work force planning. However, there is a clear requirement for HEE to have regard to work force planning, and it has already committed, with a five-year work force plan that it published in December, to give us clarity about its thinking.

As someone who works in the health service, albeit on a part-time basis, I recognise the importance of having the right numbers of staff with the right skills in the right place to deliver safe care locally. That is why we have placed a duty on Health Education England under clause 96 to ensure the supply of sufficient skilled health workers. To underpin that duty, clause 99 places a clear duty on Health Education England to have regard to NHS England’s priorities for the provision of health services, likely future demand for those services, and the numbers of skilled and trained staff required to meet those priorities.

The Bill places a strong emphasis on partnership working and, through the LETBs, requires local health care providers to demonstrate strengthened leadership and ownership of work force planning and development. Amendment 164 would require the Secretary of State to make a statement to Parliament should HEE project that the number of skilled health care workers available was lower than the required level. It would be inappropriate to legislate for the Secretary of State to make statements in Parliament about such projections. HEE, as a public body, will publish annual plans and be held to account by its board. It is always possible for parliamentary debates to be held and urgent questions to be tabled on work force planning. Hon. Members may influence what is written into the mandate for HEE through such discussions—not least discussions in Committee—should there be a strong desire to change policy. However, one of the great advantages of HEE is that it can take a more independent view and will not necessarily need to have regard to the short-term political expediency that might have characterised work force planning in the past—it is able to take a more holistic view about what is in the interests of the health service. It is good that we have a body with such a role.

HEE is already obliged to report to Parliament annually on its progress on the exercise of its functions under paragraph 28(3) of schedule 5. The Bill sets out a transparent system for work force planning in clause 104, involving the annual publication of work force plans, and clear systems and processes for working closely with partners to produce such plans. When plans project work force challenges or shortages—they will often be looking ahead five years, 10 years or more—Health Education England will be expected to demonstrate evidence of the action it is taking to address that in partnership with arm’s length bodies and partners in the health and care system.

Clause 99 sets out that, in its work force planning, Health Education England must have regard to the likely future demand for health services and for persons to work as health care workers. HEE will, of course, try to match supply to demand as far as possible. As  everybody knows, work force planning in the health care system is complex and varies from one work force group to another. As increasingly more care will be delivered—for the right reasons—by multidisciplinary teams, it is important that Health Education England looks at health care more broadly and at how it can be delivered more effectively by those multidisciplinary teams, rather than simply looking at silos of individual work force groups.

Changes in health care service provision, new drugs and technological advances in how care is delivered have a big impact on work force planning. That challenge faces every health care system, but it is one that HEE will look at specifically when it puts in place longer term work force plans. Of course we understand that it is in no one’s interests to have an under-supply of health professionals graduating from courses or training programmes, which is why there is a clear duty on Health Education England under clause 96 to ensure security of supply.

Clause 98(8) requires Health Education England to keep its plans under review and to publish any revisions. The first five-year work force plan for England was published in December 2013 and will be subject to ongoing review and revision annually. By drawing on plans developed by local health care providers through the LETBs, Health Education England will be able to identify work force pressures early, so far as is possible.

I hope that hon. Members will feel reassured by those remarks, and I ask the hon. Member for Copeland to withdraw his amendment. He and other Members should be assured that Health Education England will take a longer term view of how it does its business and looks after the future interests of our health and care work force.