To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to (a) recruit and (b) train more (i) medical physicists and (ii) clinical engineers.

The number of Scientist Training Programme (STP) trainees in Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering has tended to increase, with larger increases in recent years. The number of Higher Specialist Scientist Training (HSST) trainees has remained fairly constant. The following two tables show the number of trainees in the Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering STP each year since 2011, and the number of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering trainees in HSST each year since 2014, respectively:

Note: The data for 2024 is subject to change, and without the Wales numbers.

Notes:

- the data for 2024 is subject to change, and without the Wales numbers; and

- data is not available for the year 2022.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out the future National Health Service workforce requirements, and includes healthcare science figures, though this is not broken down into Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering workforce targets. The plan assesses that education and training places for healthcare scientists need to increase by 20 to 34%, reaching between 930 and 1,039 places by 2033/34. The ambition set out in this plan is to increase training places for healthcare scientists by 32%, to over 1,000 places, by 2031/32. We will work towards achieving this ambition by increasing training places by 13%, to over 850, by 2028/29.

The workforce plan also sets out the ambition to retain up to 130,000 more staff across the NHS over the next 15 years, through measures to improve staff’s experience of working in the NHS. This applies to all NHS staff groups, including medical physicists and clinical engineers.