As the Minister says, we are here to discuss removing the bursary from postgraduate nursing students, but it would be crazy not to learn from the experience of the past two years following the removal of the undergraduate
bursary in 2016. Scotland maintained that bursary, as indeed did Northern Ireland and Wales. We provide £6,500 as a bursary and up to £2,500 carers allowance for those with caring commitments, and obviously there are no tuition fees, so that saves another £9,000 a year. Our students are therefore £18,000 a year better off. Only in England has the undergraduate bursary been removed and tuition fees introduced. So nurses in England will face coming out with debts of £50,000 to £60,000.
As has already been said, there has been a 33% fall in applications. Several Government Members have said that there are still plenty of applications, but what talent has been lost in that third? Exactly who are the people who are not applying for nursing because there is no longer a bursary? There has been an even bigger fall—42%—in the number of mature students applying, yet we know that mature nursing students have a much greater tendency to stay in the place where they start and to stay in nursing. We are discussing postgraduate students tonight, and the biggest advantage of postgraduate students is that they will be trained more quickly. The Minister mentioned the fact—although he did not expand on it—that postgraduates already have student loans. The idea of asking them to take on second student loan is likely to result not in a 33% or 42% drop but in an even bigger drop.
The Minister talks about the extra money that the NHS is investing, but why not invest it in attracting people to study nursing as a degree? It is fine to talk about nursing apprenticeships, but we hear that only 30 people have taken those up, and they will not be ready until 2022, so they are not a quick answer. I have nothing against the idea of nurse apprentices, but nurses are now leaders in the health service; we have advanced nurse practitioners and nurses who are managing and leading services. That requires them to be educated to degree level and to have the experience to act as leaders.
What we hear from the Royal College of Nursing is not that there are now 700 fewer nurses in total, but that 700 fewer nurses have started training through the degree course, yet all this change was meant to be about expanding that number. It has not expanded; it reduced last year. The danger is that that pattern will continue and be even more marked for postgraduate students.
In Scotland, obviously, we have maintained the bursary. Instead of a 3% fall in the number of people starting studying, we have seen an 8% rise. Indeed, we have already seen a 10% increase in the number of people signing up for nursing places this year. We all need nurses, because all four national health services are struggling with the workforce, but NHS Improvement reports that there are 36,000 vacancies in NHS England. That is catastrophic. Literally, one in 10 nursing jobs in England are empty. That is more than twice the vacancy rate we face in Scotland. This is safety issue. The Secretary of State talked about safety. This is part of what led to the junior doctors’ strike, because we are talking about avoidable deaths. Research shows that the only measure that reduces avoidable deaths in hospital is the ratio of registered nurses to patients—not healthcare assistants, auxiliaries, doctors or anyone else. This is about registered nurses actually looking after patients.
The extra places that we were told would be funded by removing the undergraduate bursary will start only this autumn, so they will not be ready until 2021. The apprentices will not be ready until 2022. Postgraduate
students starting this autumn will at least be ready in 2020. This is urgent. The NHS in England is struggling for the lack of nurses. They are the people who make the difference to safety. The Government should be investing in whatever will produce high-quality nurse leaders as quickly as possible, and that is postgraduates.
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