Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the number of NHS learning disability nurses.

The Department and Health Education England are undertaking work to ensure that the National Health Service has access to learning disability nurses required to deliver high quality care. This includes ensuring nurses in other sectors have opportunities within their competency frameworks to develop their skills further to work in mental health and learning disability nursing and offering postgraduate students who commenced their loan funded studies in 2018/19 a £10,000 incentive payment once they take up employment in the field.

In addition, Health Education England continues to work with stakeholders across the health and social care system to raise the profile of learning disability nursing, including working with the university sector to recruit more students onto courses and in partnership with the University and Colleges Admissions Service a recruitment campaign which is run during university clearing.