Recommendation 34

We are concerned that the ongoing merger of NHS England into the Department of Health and Social Care poses risks to delivery of a renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England. The Government must ensure that 75 it retains the capacity and expertise to deliver on women’s health reforms. The renewed Women’s Health Strategy must be transparent about the workforce considerations required to achieve its aims, including how key barriers in time and capacity for training and improved service delivery will be achieved. The Government must face the reality that a workforce that is burned out and struggling to retain numbers will not be able to address the problems identified in this Report. Alongside the renewal of the strategy, we recommend the Government conduct and publish a workforce review, to ensure that it has the capacity and expertise to deliver it. It should not publish a renewed strategy until it can be certain it has the human resources required to deliver each element of it effectively. (Recommendation, Paragraph 134)