Health and Social Care

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The CQC report, which I am sure the noble Lord has looked at, talks about agencies and indeed nursing home providers deregistering. It also talks about the ones that are registering. There is a fairly consistent turnover in the number of those, so it is about balance. There is a similar number of providers within the market—again, with slightly fewer residential nursing and slightly more domiciliary to reflect the kind of balances of care that we have discussed.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, as the figures today show that the number of registered nurses in Britain is actually falling, and bearing in mind that the existence of care beds depends upon nurses, will the Minister answer the Question that I asked earlier this week and give us a progress report on the number of students who entered nursing courses at universities this September, so that we can make a judgment on the current position?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I think the noble Lord is referring to the King’s Fund report on nursing. It is important to stress that there are still greater numbers of nurses overall compared to 2010; indeed, over 11,000 more on wards. There are some particular shortages in mental health and community nursing, which have been alluded to before. In terms of the nursing numbers, he will know, because we have discussed this before, that there is a ratio of about 2:1 in the numbers of applications for nursing places. I do not have a more recent update than that. My expectation therefore is that that was the position going into September. I shall certainly write to him with the details. I emphasise that this increase in the number of training places, with funded clinical placements, is designed to address the issue that we have about the need for more nurses as we have a growing and ageing population.