Mr. Bernard Gloster:

When I came to this position in March of last year, as the Deputy will be aware, the narrative and conversation was very much about not being able to recruit all the people the health service wanted to recruit. In 2023, that changed significantly under our recruitment approach, and our recruitment ability improved enormously. I am not suggesting that was because I arrived, but just that was part of an overall improvement process. The result is we ended up with more than we could afford, putting it simply.

Regarding prioritisation, a lot of thought went into planning for many of the posts that were recruited. The control environment was weak and, therefore, we would end up with jobs that one might say were not the highest priority at times. Since I introduced the pause temporarily in October of this year, we prioritised derogations for specific grades. That is why, even with the pause, the total number in the health service grew in November, December, January, February, March and April and, for the first time, only fell slightly in May of this year. They were all prioritised and focused exactly at the heart of maintaining front-line services.