In the NHS Plan we committed to spending over 30 million by 2004 providing more childcare including 100 on site nurseries. We need to go further. We will increase spending by half over the next two years to provide a further fifty new NHS nurseries. For much of the 1990s the student bursary was frozen. In the last three years we have increased it so that the 50,000 students studying for a nurse diploma now each receive 4,805 a year.
Student nurses are crucial to the future of the health service.
Currently one in six of them give up their course before they have completed it. That has to change. Student nurses deserve more than they are currently getting. So from September, student nurses studying for a diploma will each receive a 500 increase in their bursary. This is the biggest increase since the introduction of the student nurses bursary.