NHS Bursary

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

I would hope that it decreased. I will touch on some of the costs of recruitment later. Students who receive bursaries under the current structure have less to live on than other students, despite the fact that their courses are longer. They face particular financial hardship in the final year, when funding is reduced. In one London university in 2012-13, 63% of the entire hardship fund went to NHS-funded students, which goes to show how much the system is of concern, and in need of investigation and reform.

Funding for nursing and physiotherapy degrees is lower than for any other subject in higher education, even though the courses put much greater demands on universities than many other courses in areas such as quality assurance, laboratory space and simulation kit. Universities receive less than the courses cost to deliver in many instances. There is a cap on the number of bursaries, and more than half the people who want to train to be nurses are turned away.

In changing the system from a bursary to a loan structure, the Government propose to remove the cap on places, and they expect the reforms to provide up to 10,000 additional nursing and health professional places during this Parliament. Some people who are concerned about the withdrawal of the bursary are worried about students having no money. Even now, many students, especially in London, with its high housing costs, say that the bursary nowhere near covers their living expenses.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

One thing that concerns many of us is the fact that the students we are talking about are not the same as many other students. They tend to be women or people who are returning to nursing. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the cost of living issue—especially as those people are more likely to have dependents or existing commitments that they are trying to fund while studying—makes the change to the bursary system all the more worrying, because it will prevent even more people from being able to study to become nurses?

[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. In a little while, I will cover some of the issues that particularly affect nursing, and look at why some of the concerns about the nursing course are acute for those people. Let me conclude the remarks I was making a minute ago. The loans system, according to the Government, will cover the cost plus more, increasing the money available for living costs by about 25%. Looking at the structure, it seems that there are two avenues of concern. Some issues are particular to nurses, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) suggested, but there is also a general student loan debate—rehearsing the student loan debate the House had some years ago, before I was elected. The issue has not affected some prospective nurses, although some have completed a first degree, and I will come on to that in a second.

I will touch on the student loan debate, although it is not something that we need to go over again, having discussed it at some length in various media and in the House a few years ago. When I talk about the debate, I always recommend that people look up Martin Lewis, the financial expert who runs the MoneySavingExpert.com website. He is not uncritical in his acceptance of the current tuition fee regime and loan structure, but he comes up with some interesting mythbusters. For anybody considering the prospect of taking out a loan before studying, he is well worth a read. He talks about not confusing the cost and the price tag of a degree because the main practical issue is how much people have to pay having graduated, rather than the top line figure of the debt. I will go into that in a second. Repayment is effectively based on salary, and repayment costs are 9% of everything someone earns above £21,000. For example, a nurse on a band 5 salary would pay about £5.73 a month in student loan repayments. It is not an up-front cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

Those statistics concern me greatly. I should probably have said at the outset of this debate that I am a member and supporter of Unison. I also draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For completeness, I should also say that I am a former president of the National Union of Students and have a long-standing interest in such issues.

It concerns me that there might be a detrimental impact on recruitment, particularly given that my local NHS trust had to fly nurses over from Portugal to fill vacancies. I have no problem with those Portuguese nurses coming over to help plug the gap, but we have plenty of home-grown talent in the form of nurses who would welcome such a job opportunity. That is felt strongly by local people in my area.

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend is a near neighbour to Barts hospital trust, which is currently spending £10 million a year at Whipps Cross university hospital, our local hospital, such is the shortage. A hospital that is £941 million in debt due to its private finance initiative loans clearly needs to save money, yet it is having to pay £10 million for agency nurses. Does he think that the policy will make that easier or harder to deal with?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I believe it will make it harder. That concerns me, because Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust covers part of my constituency and the other half is served by the Barts Health NHS Trust. Both trusts are in special measures, and one issue that has contributed to that has been the inability of both trusts to recruit and retain the staff necessary to provide the timely and quality care that residents in Ilford North and other parts of north-east London have come to expect.