Lord Turnberg – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Turnberg on 2016-03-16.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the observations of the National Audit Office that there was a 7.2 per cent shortfall in nursing, midwifery and health visitor staffing levels in 2014.

Lord Prior of Brampton

The Department has set up Health Education England (HEE) to plan the future healthcare workforce for England. They are responsible for ensuring a secure workforce supply that reflects the needs of local service users, providers and commissioners of healthcare. There are already over 50,000 nurses in training. HEE has increased adult nurse training places by 14% over the last two years. HEE has also increased midwifery training places by 1.6% in the last 12 months and have confirmed their intention to maintain that number of places in 2017-18.

In addition to funding nurses through undergraduate training, HEE is running a return to practice campaign to attract nurses back to the National Health Service. This initiative has already yielded an additional 779 nurses available for employment now.