Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people have undertaken a nursing apprenticeship in (a) the London Borough of Bexley and (b) London in each of the last five years.

There have been 40,650 apprenticeship starts for the Health, Public Services and Care sector subject area reported to date in the first half of the 2017/18 academic year (August 2017 to January 2018) in England: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-apprenticeships.

We want to increase the number of nursing apprenticeships and now have a complete apprentice pathway from entry level to postgraduate advanced clinical practice in nursing. This is a huge achievement in supporting people from all backgrounds to enter a nursing career in the NHS.

The registered nurse (degree) apprenticeship standard was approved for delivery on 9 May 2017. There were 20 total starts on the registered nurse (degree) apprenticeship reported to date in the 2017/18 academic year (August 2017 to January 2018) in England, of which fewer than five were started in London and Bexley.

We have also created a new programme for nursing associate apprentices to broaden the routes into the profession. 5,000 starts are planned in 2018, with a further 7,500 in 2019.

We are working very closely with ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care, along with employers and Health Education England to make sure that the NHS is able to recruit and benefit from apprentices in nursing and a number of other occupations.