Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect of the changes outlined in the Reforming Healthcare Education Funding consultation on the take-up of Graduate Entry Midwifery Pre-Registration Programme courses.

We expect this reform to enable universities to provide up to 10,000 additional training places to study pre-registration nursing, midwifery and the allied health subjects.

The Government response to the consultation acknowledged the risk that if funding was not available to prospective pre-registration postgraduate healthcare applicants, student numbers, and therefore workforce supply, could fall. As a transitional arrangement until a longer term solution can be found the Government set out it will, for the cohort starting in 2017/18 and for a capped number of students, provide a bursary for tuition and maintenance to meet the full costs of the course for postgraduate students, including those on midwifery programmes.

There are currently near record numbers of nurses and midwives in post in the National Health Service in England. The latest available figures from June 2016 show a total headcount of 25,832 midwives in post.

As at 31 March 2016 there were 6,350 midwives in training of which 471 are on the short 18 month course.