Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department's recruitment target is for the nursing degree apprenticeship entry route, and what recent steps his Department has taken to meet that target.

There is no recruitment target for the nurse degree apprenticeship. The Government has a clear aspiration that once the apprentice route is established, up to 1,000 apprentice nurses could join the National Health Service each year.

The registered nurse (degree) apprenticeship standard was approved for delivery on 9 May 2017. To date, there have been 260 starts on the registered nurse (degree) apprenticeship in the 2017 to 2018 academic year (August 2017 to April 2018) in England but this will continue to increase over the full year August 2017 to August 2018.

The Department has no immediate plans to provide additional funding for the costs of education for the nurse degree apprenticeship, which should be met from the apprentice levy.