Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many training posts for nurses were commissioned in each year since 2010-11.

The following table shows the number of available nurse training places by year, for the period 2010-11 to 2016-17.

Source: Health Education England (HEE) since 2013. Financial Information Management System prior to 2013.

Pre-registration nurse training places will no longer be commissioned in the same way that has been done previously by HEE. The reforms for healthcare education funding from August 2017 will mean students will move onto the student loans system; giving universities the flexibility to provide additional places, based on local need and National Health Service clinical capacity. HEE will continue to fund the required number of clinical placements to meet the longer-term NHS workforce needs.

On 3 October 2017, my Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health announced a 25% increase in undergraduate nurse training places which will be available to students from 2018. We are going beyond what was announced in Spending Review 2015 and August 2017 of an additional 10,000 places announced in 2015. The Government commitment means additional undergraduate nurse training places of up to 15,510 in England by the end of 2020/21