I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. She is absolutely right to point out that all our focus has to be on making sure that the jewel in Britain’s crown—the national health service—has the qualified staff to do the job and keep our patients and loved ones safe.
I have talked about the failure to fill the vacancies in the NHS at the moment, and that is even before we consider the impact of Brexit on the 21,000 brilliant nurses who have come from EU countries to serve in our national health service. Only two months ago, the Health Secretary said that the winter crisis in our NHS was “probably…the worst ever”, but if he carries on like this, there will be worse to come.
It is one thing for Ministers to push ahead with policies against the warning of the Opposition. It is quite another for them to ignore their Departments’ impact assessments, yet that is precisely what Ministers have done. The Department for Education’s assessment of the changes to the bursary said that it would disproportionately affect women and ethnic minority students, yet Ministers have wilfully pressed ahead. Then the Department of Health and Social Care found that the change could make women, older students and students with lower incomes less likely to participate in postgraduate nursing courses. Again, Ministers pressed ahead, and we have seen the consequences not just in the number of applications, but in who has applied. Just as they were warned, the profile of our future nurses has become less representative. In particular, there has been a 42% fall in applications from mature students.
This is not simply a matter of fairness or even just about the benefit of a diverse workforce providing frontline care to a diverse population. Older nursing graduates are more likely to stay longer in the NHS and are more likely to choose areas such as mental health or learning disability nursing, which are facing severe staff shortages. Just yesterday, campaigners warned of the impact that the abolition of the bursary has had on those areas.