Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to fill nursing vacancies in the NHS.

We have set up a comprehensive work programme to improve retention and support return to practice, invest in and diversify our training pipeline and ethically recruit internationally. The number of nurses has increased by almost 11,100 (3.8%), between November 2019 and November 2020.

In September 2020, we introduced a new funding package of at least £5,000 per annum available to all eligible pre-registration nursing students at an English university. Health Education England is also continuing to work with NHS England and NHS Improvement on the ‘We are the NHS’ campaign which aims to increase applications for both degree courses and direct entry jobs.