NHS Long-Term Plan

Karen Lee Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Absolutely. The most important way of spending to save is to invest in prevention, and a lot of that work comes from strong local hospitals. Before my hon. Friend finally leaves this place, I have no doubt at all that her local hospital will be called not the Horton General Hospital, but the Great Horton General Hospital.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with me that without the reinstatement of the nursing bursary, we cannot even hope to train enough nurses. The figures show that the numbers training have fallen—this is a serious inquiry—and until we can train enough nurses, we can talk about extra nurses, but we will always need agency nurses. Does he agree that we need to reinstate the nursing bursary so that people can afford to train?

[Mr Hunt]

The reason why we took what I fully accept was a very difficult decision was that we wanted to fund the training of an additional 5,000 nurses every year. When there is a reform of higher education funding, there is always an initial dip in applications. In this case, record numbers of 18 to 19-year-olds applied, but there was a dip among mature students. That is why we have introduced the apprenticeship route. We need to make sure that that works if that dip is to be reversed.