Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the additional funding for the NHS announced by the Prime Minister will be used to increase the number of nursing bursaries.

The education funding reforms announced in the 2015 Spending Review started to take effect from August 2017 and pre-registration nursing students began to access student loans rather than receiving a National Health Service bursary.

In January 2019, the NHS published its Long Term Plan which sets out a 10 year vision for healthcare in England. The NHS Interim People Plan, published on 3 June, sets out the immediate actions needed to grow the nursing workforce across all settings by over 40,000 in the next five years.

We will work with the NHS and the Higher Education Institution sector to improve awareness of the financial support packages available to all undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare students and how they can be accessed.