Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many nurses were employed by the NHS in England in each year since 2004.

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics for England. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care, local authorities or other providers.

The following table shows the number of nurses and health visitors and midwives who work in National Health Service trusts and CCGs in England, as at September each year since 2004 and March 2019 (latest available data), full time equivalent. Nurses and health visitors are recorded together so we are unable to provide data solely for nurses.

Sources: Non-Medical Workforce Census, NHS Digital workforce statistics

The following table shows the number of nursing students commissioned by the Department/Health Education England (HEE) in each year since 2004 and the number of acceptances to nursing degree courses via the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Following student finance reform, students starting courses after August 2017 were no longer directly commissioned by HEE.

Sources: HEE-Education Commissioning Dataset, UCAS end of cycle data 2018