Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effect on the number of people enrolling for postgraduate nursing degrees of (a) removing the bursary for postgraduate nursing students and (b) the debt that such people will have incurred from undergraduate degree loans.

It is not possible to make a full assessment of the effect of moving pre-registration postgraduate healthcare students onto the standard loan system on student enrolment before the close of the application cycle.

In July 2016 the Government published a revised economic impact assessment alongside the response to its consultation: Reforming healthcare education funding: creating a sustainable future workforce.

A revised version of the original Equality Analysis, published in February 2018 to accompany the reforms to pre-registration postgraduate healthcare funding, can be found with the aforementioned documents at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/changing-how-healthcare-education-is-funded

Following implementation of the policy, the Department will look for suitable opportunities, including through existing stakeholder forums, to monitor developments.

In order to meet the growing need to increase the future supply of registered nurses, additional clinical placement funding was announced by the Department in August and October 2017. This will enable around 5,000 more nursing students to enter training each year from September 2018; an historic 25% increase.