NHS: Bursaries

Lord Elton Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I think that the Royal College of Nursing, Unison and other unions have concerns about moving from bursaries to student loans; it would be idle to pretend otherwise. But we are convinced that the demand for young people to go into nursing is very strong and that the availability of more money through the loan system to nurses at university will therefore encourage more people to go into nursing.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that there is a simple answer to my question that everybody else knows. My noble friend said that there were 20,000 nursing places available for training and more than 50,000 people wishing to fill them. But we also read that there is a shortage of nurses such that there are very heavy demands made for agency nursing. What explains that discrepancy?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the reason for the discrepancy is that at the moment the bursary system effectively caps the number of student places for nursing. One of the purposes of moving to the loan system is to remove that cap and our estimate is that by so doing an additional 10,000 places will be created between 2017 and 2020.