Recommendation 17

The January 2019 NHS Long Term Plan originally committed to producing a workforce implementation plan by late 2019. In September 2020, the Department told us that it expected to publish the workforce plan following the December 2020 Spending Review.59 In July 2021, it finally commissioned the work from NHS England and Health Education England and expected to publish this in Spring 2022, but this date was again missed and the plan was still unpublished when we took evidence for this report.60 NHS England informed us it hoped to complete and deliver this work to the Department before Christmas 2022, or by the end of the financial year at the very latest.61 We asked the Department to commit to publishing the plan by April 2023, but it declined to do so and informed us key conclusions from the plan would be published by ministers in due 49 Qq 63–65 50 HM Treasury, Treasury Minutes, Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Seventh to the Thirteenth reports from Session 2019–21, CP 291, September 2020 51 Letter dated 15 November 2022 from the Shona Dunn at the Department of Health & Social Care to the Committee 52 Committee of Public Accounts, Sustainability and transformation in the NHS, Twenty-Ninth report of Session 2017–19, HC 793, 27 March 2018 53 Committee of Public Accounts, NHS backlogs and waiting times in England, Forty-Fourth Report of Session 2021–22, HC 747, 16 March 2022 54 Qq 75–76, C&AG’s Report, paras 2.25–2.26, ICS0011, ICS0012, ICS0019, ICS0048 55 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.25, ICS0048 56 Qq 97–98, 100 57 Q 80 58 Q 82, C&AG’s Report, para 2.26, ICS0012 59 Committee of Public Accounts, NHS capital expenditure and financial management, Eighth report of Session 2019–21, HC 344, 8 July 2020 60 C&AG’s Report, para 2.28 61 Qq 85–87 Introducing Integrated Care Systems 15 course.62 Shortly after our evidence session, the Department committed to “publishing a comprehensive NHS workforce plan, including independently verified workforce forecasts