Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Whately and Tonia Antoniazzi

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Member makes an important point, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) a moment ago, about the importance of visiting for those in care homes, and for their relatives and loved ones. We are striking the difficult balance between protecting those in care homes and ensuring that they have visits wherever possible, but these visits must be done safely. I have heard from the sector about the aspiration for some family members to be treated as care workers—for instance, if they visit the care home regularly. As we expand testing, I very much intend that we should test some visitors—and am making the case for doing so—but it is all part of how we expand and use our testing resources.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

  If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

Nursing Workforce Shortage: England

Debate between Helen Whately and Tonia Antoniazzi

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Helen Whately]

I have not seen a database. The hon. Member refers to the coronavirus plans, which are very much on my mind as we talk about the immediate and longer-term plans to increase the number of nurses in the NHS. Clearly, we also have the short-term challenge of ensuring that the staff are there, and that work is absolutely in hand. Returners are an important part of it and we need to ensure that we make use of nurses who have already been trained, to boost the NHS workforce. All in all, we want to ensure that the NHS is a great place to work for nurses who return to it and for those working in it right now. The absolute foundation for ensuring that we no longer have nursing shortages is to look after the nurses that we currently have. On that foundation, we can seek to recruit and train new nurses.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I welcome the Minister to her place. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cancer, I would like to take this opportunity to ask her to come to speak to us about the NHS people plan, if possible.

[Helen Whately]

I thank the hon. Member for her invitation. As I am new to the job, I am trying to ensure that I speak to as many stakeholders as possible. I would be delighted to talk to APPGs such as the one she chairs, as and when I can.

I turn now to the ambition to increase the number of nurses that we train. The latest UCAS stats show that there have been nearly 36,000 applications to study nursing and midwifery courses at English universities this year, which is about 2,000 more than last year. The new students will benefit from the new £5,000-a-year maintenance grant, an extra £1,000 if they study specialist subjects such as learning disability and mental health nursing—where we have shortages—and a further £1,000 if they study in areas struggling to recruit. There is also further funding available to support childcare costs, and that financial support is in addition to the learning support fund, which provides help with travel costs for placements, childcare and exceptional cases of hardship. That is all in addition to being able to apply for a student loan. Unlike other courses, students applying to nursing, midwifery and many allied healthcare professional courses as a second degree will also qualify for the maintenance grant and for student loans.

I set out the financial support we are offering because I recognise that, as the hon. Member for Bedford has said, it can be hard to afford to study nursing, particularly for mature students. We really want more nursing students. Last year, 23,630 people accepted a place to study nursing or midwifery in England. This year, I want to see more. As I have said, there has already been an increase in applicants, but it is not too late for anyone who has yet to apply. UCAS is accepting late applications up to 30 June, and from 6 July people can apply for a course through clearing.

My message goes out to anyone watching this debate who thinks that nursing is for them: please, get applying. If someone wants to become a nurse, we want to help them—no matter who they are or what their background is. However, we know that university is not the route for everyone, so there are other ways to become a nurse. For instance, the Government have developed the apprenticeship pathway, so people can go from being a healthcare support worker to being a nursing associate, and then to being a nurse. If they want, they can then move on to postgraduate advanced clinical practice and nursing. At present there are nearly 2,000 nurse degree apprentices. Although nursing associates are doing a really important job in their own right, they can become registered nurses via a shortened nursing degree.

The things I have just set out are all about increasing our home-grown nurse force, which is absolutely vital step in ensuring that this country has a sustainable nursing workforce. I am fully aware, however, that we will also need to recruit internationally in order to achieve the ambition of 50,000 new nurses. We cannot do that from the home-grown workforce alone. Many of us, including patients and their families, have good reasons to be grateful to nurses who have come from all over the world to work in our NHS. I am grateful to them.

As we look ahead to including international recruitment as a way to boost our nursing workforce, we do so mindful of the ethics of recruiting from elsewhere. We want to ensure that it works not just for us but for the countries that our nurses come from. We are determined to build bridges with health systems across the world, to share NHS expertise and provide staff who come to work in the NHS with a chance to learn from our health system, just as we benefit from their skills.

The hon. Member for Bedford asked how we plan to increase the nursing numbers by 50,000. In essence, the plan is to improve retention, to support returners to the workforce, to boost our home-grown numbers, and to complement that with international recruitment. In response to questions about when we will publish the NHS people plan, that will be done within the next few months. I have also been asked who is responsible for the workforce. I take the responsibility for workforce in my brief very seriously. I feel very strongly that, from day to day, the biggest determinant of the experience of any nurse or member of the NHS workforce is their employer. NHS employers are responsible for their workforce, and I am keen to see every single trust and NHS organisation investing in and supporting and valuing their staff. As I said at the beginning of my speech, the NHS is only as good as its people. They are great, and we must look after them.

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. This has been an important discussion and some good points have been raised. The mere fact that we are having this conversation demonstrates the importance of nurses to us all and to our health system. Some hon. Members talked about a crisis in our NHS and in nursing, but we have to be careful in getting the right balance in the language we use. Yes, we know that it is tough on the frontline, but we also know that nurses and NHS staff more broadly talk about how very rewarding they find their day-to-day work, and about what a wonderful job it is. I have spoken to nurses who tell me that they would never want to do any other job, so it might be helpful to get the right balance.

The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) says that her experience as a teacher means that she knows how to inspire. I call on her and everyone else to follow that guidance, as we need to ensure that everybody knows that working in the NHS is a great career. The NHS is a great place to work. Let us not talk it down. Let us make sure that we spend time talking it up.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I appreciate the Minister’s comments. I would never talk down a profession that we need and depend on so much. The nurses I have come across, whether from throughout the UK or from overseas, have been absolutely wonderful. We are being positive and want to retain people, and this issue is important to us. Does the Minister agree that this is not just about our healthcare, but about our teachers and public services? We also have a commitment to our consultants, who have a lot of issues and are always overworking to ensure that frontline services continue. Their dedication is absolutely brilliant and we appreciate it.

[Helen Whately]

I thank the hon. Member for her comments. We can absolutely agree how much we value everyone who works in our public services and with the NHS, including consultants, junior doctors, nurses, nursing associates, healthcare assistants and allied healthcare professionals, as well as every single porter, administrator and member of the management team. I am sure that I have left out some individual roles—healthcare scientists, for example—for which I apologise. The whole NHS workforce has my appreciation.