Nurses: Training

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, there were 3,500 more nurses working in the NHS in 2015 than there were in 2010. In retrospect, we did not anticipate in 2010 the Mid Staffordshire crisis and the Francis report, which led to a very substantial increase in nursing levels after about 2013. The noble Lord is right; we were short of nursing throughout that period. We are addressing that now with a 15% increase in nursing places and we expect that by 2020 there will be 40,000 more nurses than there were in 2015.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the fact that the Blair Government introduced only one standard for nursing? You had to have five A-levels and take a university degree. The abolition of the state-enrolled nurses, who would have made—and did make—a marvellous contribution, has been very retrograde. Now we are dependent on a large number of foreign nurses. In every hospital that I have visited, we rely on them completely. Why can we not have that intermediate level of training back?