Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, which is why it is extremely frustrating that the current signals from the EU are that it is unwilling to bring forward negotiations about the status of EU nationals here, and indeed that of British nationals in the EU. No one from either side of the Brexit debate has ever said that there will be no immigration post-Brexit; they have simply said that we will control that immigration ourselves through this House and through decisions made by the British people at general elections.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

On behalf of the official Opposition, may I echo the words of the Secretary of State in relation to the tragic events in Berlin and send our condolences to the people there?

The Institute for Employment Studies has today warned that Brexit could make nursing shortages even worse. That follows The Times reporting that

“applications for nursing, midwifery and allied health courses were down by about 20%”

and that in some institutions applications had halved. The decision to scrap nurse bursaries is having the consequences that every expert predicted it would. With the uncertainty of Brexit looming over our workforce, now is not the time to be taking a massive gamble with our nurses so, in the light of the evidence, will the Secretary of State now agree to scrap that disastrous policy?

[Mr Hunt]

I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that the purpose of that policy was to allow us to train more nurses; in fact, we will be training 40,000 more nurses during this Parliament. We have more than 11,000 more nurses in our NHS wards, and at Countess of Chester hospital—the hon. Gentleman’s own hospital—there are 172 more nurses than in 2010.