Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to increase funding for continuous professional development funding for nurses in the NHS.

Different organisations have a range of responsibilities for training and development. Individual employers have responsibility for supporting staff with courses which are required to fulfil duties to work in their organisation and core employment requirements.

National funding through Health Education England (HEE) has historically been used to support development of the National Health Service workforce. HEE invests up to £300 million per year on supporting individuals in NHS employment achieve registered qualifications and a further £80 million on workforce transformation projects agreed locally, some of which has prioritised training courses for ongoing development.

HEE is considering alternative models for traditional continual professional development funding; for example, exploring routes for apprenticeships for post graduate qualifications that previously may have been funded directly at a national level.