Education (Student Fees, Awards and Support)(Amendment) Regulations 2017 — House of Lords, 2017-04-27
Topic: Health
James O’Shaughnessy (Conservative, Centre-right): While the noble Lord may have been prescient and influential, I fear that on this issue he, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat party are wrong. They are wrong because the system that we are introducing for student nurses matches that experienced by other undergraduate students—a system that has been the primary driver of the big expansion of higher education and improved participation among disadvantaged young people—and wrong because of the fears of the impact of Brexit that he has evoked. I thought that the Labour Party was in favour of leaving the European Union, although having heard the tortured exposition of Labour’s policy earlier this week that is anyone’s guess. But I reassure the House that this Government not only understand the difficult choices that need to be made to ensure that our NHS has the resources and personnel that it needs to thrive, but, if we are fortunate enough to be re-elected, intend to make a success of Brexit and, as immigration is reduced, to bring more of our domestic workers into the NHS to meet the challenges ahead I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the amazing work that more than 2.5 million people working in the NHS and care systems do every day, often in challenging conditions. They represent values to which we all aspire—service, hard work, compassion—and are an inspiration to us all. There can be no person in this country who does not have cause to give them thanks for their expertise and commitment The Government are taking action on several fronts to support that workforce so that it can deliver excellent patient care through flexible working, good leadership, expanded routes into practice and new career structures. As part of these changes, from August 2017 new full-time students studying pre-registration nursing, midwifery or one of the allied health subjects will have access to the standard student support system for tuition fee loans and maintenance loans These reforms will enable more money to go into front-line services—around £1 billion a year to be reinvested in the NHS. Additionally, they will help to secure the future supply of nurses and other health professionals in several ways, such as by removing the cap, identified by my noble friend Lord Willetts as being a feature of the current system, so that more applicants can gain a place. Universities will be able to deliver up to 10,000 additional training places. The changes also enable a typical provision of a 25% increase in living-cost support for healthcare students and put universities in a stronger financial and competitive position so they can invest sustainably for the long term. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, in her excellent and of course, expert and well-informed speech, also pointed out that they remove a perverse incentive of the current system where it is the sole degree that is subsidised in that way. That brings with it a number of benefits, including addressing the issue identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, of the retention on courses of people who are fully committed to taking part in a nursing career Successive Governments’ reforms to student finance have put a system in place that is designed to make higher education accessible to all, as my noble friend Lord Willetts pointed out in his excellent intervention. This has allowed more people than ever to benefit from a university education and has spread more fairly the burden of costs between society at large via the taxpayer and the individuals who benefit financially from the degree course. As a consequence, disadvantaged people are now 43% more likely to go to university than in 2009, and for the last application cycle the entry rate for 18 year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds is at a record high: 19.5% in 2016, compared with 13.6% in the last year of the Labour Government in 2009. That is what we mean by a country that works for everyone. It is precisely because of these positive effects that moves towards a loan-based system have been supported by political parties across the House. They were introduced by a Labour Government, extended by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government and taken on by this Conservative Government Turning to the applications for nursing and midwifery courses, the latest data published by UCAS on 6 April show around a 22% fall in the number of applicants to nursing and midwifery courses in England compared with the same point in the 2016 application cycle. However, as my noble friend Lord Willetts pointed out, in previous cases when fees have been introduced application numbers have gone down but rebounded in future years. The same UCAS data also show that since January there have been more than 3,000 additional applicants for nursing and midwifery places, taking the current total to more than 40,000 applicants for around 23,000 places in England. The chair of the Council of Deans of Health, Dame Jessica Corner, has commented on the situation, saying: "It is to be expected that there would be fewer applications in the first year following the changes to the funding system, but we would expect this to pick up in future years" The Chief Nursing Officer, Jane Cummings, said: "Despite the drop, the level of applications received suggest that at a national level, we are still on track to meet this target in England although we need to monitor this very carefully. We are also introducing a number of opportunities to support future applicants including additional routes to become a graduate nurse" Based on all of the information available, Health Education England is confident that it will still fill the required number of training places for the NHS in England On the issues raised around Brexit, future arrangements for student support after the UK leaves the EU will need to be considered as part of wider discussions about the UK’s relationship with the EU. However, the Government have confirmed that EU students starting their courses in 2017-18 or before will continue to be eligible for student loans and home fee status for the duration of their course On numbers of non-UK nurses, it is correct that the Nursing and Midwifery Council has seen a reduction in the number of registration applications from nurses in the European Union. At the moment, it is unclear whether the drop is attributable to the introduction of more robust language testing by the NMC, rather than as a result of the decision for the UK to leave the EU. The drop in the number of applications is balanced by a reduction in outflows from the profession, meaning that, while monthly fluctuations continue, the number of EU-born nurses is broadly the same. Indeed, slightly more nurses from the EU are working in NHS trusts and CCGs than in June 2016, the time of the referendum.