Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department (a) commissioned and (b) received data from UCAS on the number of applicants for university nursing courses in England in the current 2018 undergraduate cycle by (i) by field of nursing and (ii) English region.

Health Education England commissioned data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) for the 2018 application cycle and these data were received by the Department for ongoing monitoring of nursing applications.

These data were shared by UCAS under an agreement that requires data be kept in confidence and used for internal purposes only.

The Department is working with UCAS to agree a timetable that would enable these data to be available once the current application cycle finishes in autumn 2018.