NHS Bursaries

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)]

And where has the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) been during the debate? [Interruption.] Oh, I beg your pardon, but that is not as good as being here in on the Floor of the Chamber in real life.

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to respond to the debate. I thank the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) for raising the important question of the development and expansion of nurse training in England. I thank colleagues for a good debate, with discussions informed by those with close connections with the NHS, either personally or through family.

I pay tribute to all those who work and train in hospitals, who fill the posts that we have been speaking about, and who are the subject of our debate. They are not only nurses and midwives; several colleagues made specific references to allied health professionals, such as those in dietetics, occupational therapy, orthotics and prosthetics, physiotherapy, podiatry and chiropody, radiography, speech and language therapy, operating department practice, dental hygiene and dental therapy—all important components of the NHS. We recognise the importance of the work done in our hospitals, and we thank them for their effort.

This has been a not unusual debate in which the Government propose changing something and the Opposition react with horror. Whether the Government’s arguments are good or bad, that is how it goes. There have been a variety of Opposition arguments—some good, some less good—but whenever change is proposed, there is a set of reactions. As for the poorest reaction, I say this to the hon. Member for Lewisham East with great sincerity: please do not go down the class route. It was absolutely unnecessary to try to pick out what people might have heard in various places as they were growing up and graduating. I am the son of a doctor and a teacher, so there were public health workers in my household. The sense that I got of public service and commitment was possibly shaped then. I do not think that the experience was any different from that of the hon. Lady, or of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), who had a private education at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls. I see no evidence in the hon. Lady’s obvious commitment to mental health and everything else that her conversations shaped her poorly in any way. To suggest that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), may not have picked up the same sort of information, and that that may have impacted on his care and work as a Health Minister, was pretty low. The hon. Member for Lewisham East should not go down that road again.

The two main arguments presented today against what we are trying to do have been about deterrents, or the idea that the occupations are somehow unpalatable and that people will not go into them. On deterrents, I am old enough to have been here for the original debates on the introduction of student fees. Everyone protesting against them at the time said that no one would ever go to university again, and that people from poor backgrounds would never go to university. The same arguments come up every time the subject is raised, and the same arguments have been proved false time and again. What is not false is the damage done at the time of the debates when it is suggested to those who want to aspire to higher education, and to take themselves in a different direction, that it will somehow be made impossible, and that they should not want to do it. Those arguments have been used time and again, and they have been used again today. They were wrong then; they are wrong now.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

What is unique about this situation, as has been mentioned several times, is that a disproportionate number of the nurses using the bursary scheme enter as mature students, including three of my nieces. If bursaries were not available to them, they would not have gone on to train as excellent nurses.

[Alistair Burt]

If the hon. Lady had been here for the entire debate, she would have heard people speak about the problems of hardship following bursaries; that was referred to by the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and by Government Members. People want access to more funds, which might help those whom the hon. Lady just mentioned, but the assumption is that, because it will be a student loan and because it is a change, people just will not want to do the courses. There is no evidence to suggest that that is correct. Using it as a scare story is unhelpful for the recruitment that we want.