Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any evidence that difficulties in recruiting UK nationals as nurses reflect changes in the UK's higher education system in recent years.

Until 1 August 2017, nursing, midwifery and allied health profession students had their training costs largely borne by the NHS, and this was not affected by changes to the wider higher education system.

From 1 August 2017, most new undergraduate healthcare students receive tuition fee loans and, for full-time courses, living costs support, administered by the Student Loans Company. The former Department of Health also confirmed that it would fund up to an additional 10,000 clinical placements to support this expansion. These students are in their first year of university study.

These reforms to healthcare student funding will help secure the future supply of nurses to the NHS by removing the artificial cap on training numbers in these professions, and enabling thousands of additional UK applicants to gain a place to study nursing at university.