Nicholas Soames – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2016-04-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of new entrants to nursing over the next five years.

Ben Gummer

Health Education England (HEE) is responsible for workforce planning in the National Health Service and their recently published HEE commissioning and investment plan 16/17 forecasts an additional supply of 40,000 nurses by 2020. Moving new nursing students on to the student loans system in August 2017 will allow universities to offer up to a further 10,000 nursing, midwifery and allied health degree places by 2020/21.

The HEE commissioning and investment plan 16/17 forecasts demands for additional nurses and midwives in the health and care sector in the next five years will rise by around 16,800.

The Department does not collect data on the numbers of applicants who were not successful in gaining a nurse training place.