Labour outline clear plan to train 10,000 more nurses

Following two big speeches on the NHS from Ed Miliband and Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham today, Labour have announced this evening that they would increase the number of nurse training places.

This plan would  see more than 10,000 extra places created in the next Parliament, and would be paid for by the Time to Care investment fund (the £2.5 billion made from the mansion tax, stamping down on tax avoidance and the levy on tobacco firms).

This policy looks to address the staffing crisis in the NHS. There have fewer than 8,000 nurses trained under the Coalition, compared to 2010-11. Now, over half of nurses say their ward is dangerously understaffed – and more say patient safety got worse over the last year.

Meanwhile, nurse training is oversubscribed – an Royal College of Nurses survey has estimated that  there are 54,000 applicants a year for 20,000 training places.

This policy is therefore a vital step towards Labour’s pledge of providing 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs, 5,000 new home-care workers, and 3,000 more midwives.

These plans would also allow the NHS to stop using agency staff and cut the ever-rising bill this creates for the health service. Currently Foundation Trusts are spending £1.4 billion on agency staff – this amount was  £855 million in 2010.

Miliband explained the reasoning behind this policy:

“Under David Cameron, there have been 8,000 fewer nurses trained and hospitals have been left scrambling to repair the damage –  paying hundreds of millions of pounds in agency fees.

“Our training courses in this country are massively over-subscribed and so many talented young people in Britain are missing out on the opportunity of these rewarding jobs. Instead, the NHS is forced to bring in agency staff or recruit from overseas. 

“People coming to work in the NHS from other countries make a hugely important contribution and our health service would not cope without them.

“But Britain cannot afford to waste the talents of thousands of people in this country who would become nurses if the training places were available. And our health service cannot afford to pay high costs for hiring agency staff because of the chronic staff shortages created by this government.

“As part of our Time to Care investment fund, Labour will train 10,000 more nurses above current training levels so that we achieve an average 21,000 training places a year in the next Parliament.”