Nursing: Higher Education Investment
Debate between Vicky Ford and Eleanor Smith(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Eleanor Smith
Absolutely; I totally agree. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. We should not be doing the training on the cheap. I will try to address that point in my speech.
There is a huge risk that the long-term plan will be like previous plans and that Simon Stevens will not provide or fund a solution. He is spending money on services that cannot be staffed. He is creating new posts that cannot be filled, because trained and qualified registered nurses to fill those posts do not exist. I wonder whether the Prime Minister knows that nurses do not grow on trees, just as money does not. The five year forward view substantially failed to create nurses. In fact, during that time, the opposite happened: we lost thousands of nurses. I ask right hon. and hon. Members what on earth should be prioritised above growing the number of nurses.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I agree that this is a really important issue and we must do all we can to support the nurses of the future, but does the hon. Lady agree that it is worth recording that there are 13,000 more nurses on wards today than there were in 2010?