Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the number of district nurses.

District Nurses work within Community Health Services. It is the responsibility of integrated care boards to commission Community Health Services to reflect local needs. The Government is committed to supporting and retaining the current workforce and training new District Nurses.

The government is on track to deliver on its target of 50,000 additional full-time equivalent nurses by March 2024, through improved retention and investment in a diversified training pipeline and ethical international recruitment. Nursing numbers are over 38,000 higher as of November 2022 than when the commitment was made in September 2019.