Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will provide funding to the Nursing and Midwifery Council to enable it to avoid increasing annual registration fees for registered nurses.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is an independent body. Accordingly, the NMC Council is responsible for determining the level of the annual fee it charges for registration, which must cover the full cost of its regulatory activity.

In 2012 the NMC identified that £120 per registrant per year is the amount required to cover its regulatory costs. The NMC had intended to increase the level of its fee to £120 in February 2013. However, for two years the NMC’s costs have been subsidised by a £20 million Government grant, which in-part enabled the NMC to charge a lower registration fee of £100 instead of £120.

The Government has no plans to offer the NMC a further grant to subsidise the registration fee increase to £120, which came into force on 1 February 2015.