This report finds the NHS and social care face the greatest workforce crisis in their history, compounded by the absence of a credible government strategy to tackle the situation. The report outlines the scale of the workforce crisis: research suggests the NHS in England is short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives; evidence on workforce projections say an extra 475,000 jobs will be needed in health and an extra 490,000 jobs in social care by the early part of the next decade; and hospital waiting lists reached a record high of nearly 6.5 million in April 2022. The Committee finds the government to have shown a marked reluctance to act decisively. The refusal to do proper workforce planning risked plans to tackle the Covid backlog - a key target for the NHS.