Oral Answers to Questions

Pat Glass Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

My hon. Friend is right that there is a really important role for families. More than anything, the Government want to make the healthy choice the easy choice for families. However, young children are not in control of the whole of the food environment around them, as I am sure he would acknowledge. The Government’s forthcoming strategy is focused on children. Obesity is a complex issue and, frankly, everyone needs to play their part—the Government, local government, health professionals, industry and families.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

T2. The Health Secretary just tried to tell us why we have 8,500 more nurses in the NHS. Let me tell him why it is. It is because we have record recruitment from abroad. Since the Chancellor announced the scrapping of bursaries for trainee nurses and midwives, there has been a worrying reduction in the number of applications for next year’s training, compared with what we would expect to see at this time of year. That can only have a negative impact on the number of trained nurses from this country and on net migration. Was there any discussion between the Department of Health, the Home Office and the Chancellor before this idiocy was introduced?

[Ben Gummer]

We have record levels of nurses in training and a record number of nurses in practice because of the decision by my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary to increase nurse training by 11% over the past two years. We can expand that significantly due to our reforms to the funding of nurse training. As regards nurses from abroad, part of the reason we are undertaking this change is so that every putative nurse in this country can have the opportunity of having a nursing position. At the moment, we have to limit those positions because of the funding regime that is in place.