Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment the Government has made of the potential effect on the level of mature student applications of NHS bursaries being replaced with student loans.

A preliminary Equality Analysis was published alongside the public consultation document on 7 April 2016. The Government published a consultation response and revised Equality Analysis on 21 July 2016. These documents provide the assessment of the potential effect of the replacement of National Health Service bursaries by student loans for all the protected characteristics of the Public Sector Equality Duty (Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010).

The Equality Analysis can be found on the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/539777/health-ed-ea.pdf