Responding to a vote by members of the House of Lords to require the regular publication of health and care workforce projections, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery said:

"The House of Lords took decisive action today to help put the NHS' workforce on sustainable footing. By backing Baroness Cumberlege's cross party amendment, we are one step closer to creating the robust system for long term workforce planning that our health system desperately needs.

"This important vote could not have come soon enough for the NHS.

"Today we learned the NHS has a staggering 110,000 staff vacancies. For far too long we have asked the impossible of our workforce with large numbers of staff regularly working extra unpaid hours and far too many of our colleagues reporting illness due to work related stress.

"This is increasingly putting patient safety at risk and quality of care under unsustainable pressure.

"The hard work of the 100 organisations who backed Baroness Cumberlege's amendment shows our calls for action did not fall on deaf ears.

"But our fight for a robust approach to long term NHS workforce planning isn't over yet. We would urge ministers to refrain from overturning this critical amendment when the bill returns to the House of Commons. What we need to see is the government now finding a way to work with those of us who have been supporting the amendment to find a suitable, agreed, way forward."