Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on increasing the number of specialist learning disability nurses in the NHS.

The Government has put in place a range of measures to increase nursing workforce supply, including expanding numbers of nurse training places, introduced Nurse Degree and Nursing Associate apprentices. National programmes led by NHS Improvement and Health Education England focused on improving staff retention, return to practice, overseas recruitment and improving sickness absence.

A targeted initiative for students, who commence loan funded postgraduate pre-registration nursing courses in the 2018/19 academic year, will see them eligible for a golden hello payment once they have graduated if they go on to work in learning disability, mental health or district nursing. Payments will be made to these graduates once they take up employment in the health and care sector in England.

Working with the National Health Service and the university sector, the Government is finalising the most effective way to administer and introduce the scheme and will set out details in due course.