Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many qualified nurses are currently working in the UK.

Information on how many and what proportion of qualified nurses are currently working in the United Kingdom is not held by the Department.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre latest monthly workforce statistics for March 2015 show that there are 319,013 full-time equivalent qualified nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff working in the National Health Service in England. The full monthly workforce statistics for March are available at:

http://www.hscic.gov.uk/searchcatalogue?productid=18106&q=sickness+absence+data&topics=1%2fWorkforce%2fStaff+numbers&sort=Relevance&size=10&page=1#top