National Health Service: Nurses

Lord Ribeiro Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. In fact, the workforce figures out today, which show the increases I have described, also show an increase in the number of nurses with general qualifications who are capable of working across multiple specialties and different sectors.

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, mindful of the fact that we have taken the decision to leave the European Union and realising that many of our nurses come from overseas, and more recently from Europe, surely the time to start increasing nursing numbers is now, to make sure that we deal with any shortfall that may come after 2020.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend makes an excellent point. Currently, around 7% of nurses are EU nationals. There has not been a drop-off in the number of EU nationals joining the NHS workforce since the referendum; nevertheless, it is clearly sensible to reduce our reliance on overseas nurses each year. We are doing that through additional training places and through retention and return to work schemes.