I respect the hon. Lady and I pay tribute to her for her work in the NHS as a nurse, but the figures show that not only is this change making it difficult for trainee nurses, who do an excellent job on our wards, it is contrary to what we need. Applications fell by 33%, with a 42% drop in mature students. In contrast, an undergraduate nursing course can take three years and postgraduate courses, referred to in the regulations, can take two years, making them some of the quickest ways to tackle the shortfall in numbers.
The same is true with the nursing associates suggested by the Government as another solution. The Government’s policy is not only unfair, it is failing completely on their own terms. They have pushed ahead with a policy that has reduced the number of people training to work in our NHS and now they are trying to do it again. I should add that trainee nurses in any of these routes have to do the day job as well. I pay tribute to our nurses for the fantastic job they do every single day in our NHS. Trainee nurses do not get paid the going rate. Those affected by the regulations actually have to borrow money for the privilege.
I hope the Government are clear that simply having more trainees on wards is not a solution to staff shortages. They are there to learn their job, not to do someone else’s. There is clear evidence that using support workers
or trainees as replacements for qualified nurses has potentially disastrous consequences for care. I hope the Minister will confirm that that is not the Government’s intention.
This measure does not make any financial sense. Tuition and a bursary for a postgraduate or diploma student could cost less than the average premium the NHS pays for an agency nurse for a single year. Providers have suggested that they could expand their courses by up to 50% if funding was available. This comes at a time when there are 40,000 nursing vacancies in the NHS. The Government’s failure to fill vacancies is so severe that the Migration Advisory Committee has placed nursing on the shortage occupation list, even as potential recruits in our constituencies are denied the support that they need to serve in the NHS.