Nurses: Training

Lord Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness has highlighted an important issue, which is the number of nurses in social care. I recognise that to be a problem, as does the department. A specific social care workforce consultation will get under way and is linked to the overall draft workforce plan that Health Education England has published. This is something that we are looking at. We can solve it to some extent by increasing the overall number of nurses, but we need to find ways of attracting them into the social care profession.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the lack of NHS nurses and other healthcare workers is due to the lack of a long-term sustainable workforce plan, as identified by the House of Lords committee report? If, following that report, the Government now have a long-term workforce plan for the NHS, when might it be published?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I congratulate the noble Lord on his committee’s work in this area and on making a proposal, which we have followed in putting forward a 10-year draft plan. I hope that he will have had the chance to see that—it will of course firm into a concrete plan. It is fair to say that it is honest about both the successes and the challenges that we face in needing to train more nurses. We are trying to find new ways of doing that, not just through the university route but through apprenticeships.