Brexit: Nursing Staff

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The critical point is to have enough nurses and, indeed, enough medical staff. Of course, where they come from is going to be dictated by various circumstances. As I have discussed already, language controls have been introduced in order to focus on patient safety. We do need to increase the number of nurses in the health sector. That has happened since 2010. There has been an increase. There are more in training. But clearly there need to be more as we have a growing and ageing population.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister know how many unfilled vacancies there are at this time for nurses?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I do not have that information at my fingertips. Of course, at any time there will be unfilled vacancies as nurses move around. As I said, we know that recruiting more nurses into the health service is an important priority for the years ahead, which is why we are undertaking the programmes that I mentioned.