NHS: Bursaries

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

That is a good question. Nurses spend 2,300 hours of their three-year course in clinical placements in hospitals. They are supernumerary. They are clearly supervised and mentored in that setting, but they also provide a fair amount of care in those hospitals as well. I am pretty confident that hospitals will work out an arrangement with universities to ensure that they create enough clinical placements for those nurses.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that nurses used to have free accommodation and were also paid, but now they have these debts hanging over them? What is the view of the Royal College of Nursing?

[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.