Speeches

Emma Reynolds – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Emma Reynolds on 2015-11-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many nurses’ training places were available in each region in each year since 2009; how many (a) agency nurses and (b) nurses from outside the UK were used by the NHS in each year since 2009; and what the cost to the NHS was of both such categories of nurses in each of those years.

Ben Gummer

Non-medical training numbers are collected as part of the quarterly multi professional education and training budget monitoring returns that are submitted to the Department by Health Education England (HEE). Prior to the establishment of HEE in 2013/14 these were submitted to the Department by the Strategic Health Authority (SHA) as part of their quarterly Financial Information Management Systems (FIMS) monitoring returns. The table below shows the number of nurse training places available in each SHA from 2009/10 to 2012/13.

2009/10

2010/11

2011/12

2012/13

NHS North East

1,095

1,045

1,000

992

NHS North West

3,630

3,358

3,082

3,066

NHS Yorkshire and Humber

2,299

2,278

1,848

1,805

NHS East Midlands

1,735

1,660

1,462

1,430

NHS West Midlands

2,597

2,557

2,102

2,102

NHS East of England

1,889

1,717

1,536

1,494

NHS London

3,992

3,695

3,401

3,088

NHS South East Coast

1,335

1,281

1,169

1,123

NHS South Central

1,175

1,237

1,108

1,153

NHS South West

1,590

1499

1,361

1,293

Total planned

21,337

20,327

18,069

17,546

Source: SHA quarterly FIMS monitoring returns

The following table details the information collected by HEE in relation to available nurse training places from 2013/14 to 2015/16, broken down by Local Education and Training Boards (LETB).

The disaggregated data for 2013/14 is not held within the format requested. The published national workforce plan for 2013/14 stated that there would be 18,009 training commissions available for nursing.

LETB Region

2013/14

2014/15

2015/16

North East

1,105

1,089

North West

3,415

3,322

Yorkshire and Humber

2,010

2,059

West Midlands

2,157

2,192

East Midlands

1,613

1,661

East of England

1,783

2,015

North West London

820

917

North, Central and East London

1,201

1,280

South London

1,138

1,171

Kent, Surrey and Sussex

1,126

1,209

Thames Valley

768

795

Wessex

941

1,011

South West

1,368

1,432

Total

18,009

19,445

20,153

Source: Multi-professional education and training budget monitoring returns

The Department does not collect data centrally on the number of agency nurses working in the NHS. This information may be held locally at Trust level.

The Department started to collect financial data from NHS trusts and foundation trusts in respect of net temporary and agency staffing costs specifically from 2013/14. Available data on spending nationally on all agency staff in England is set out in the table below. We are not able to separately identify total spending with agencies on nurses from centrally held data.

Total cost to the NHS of temporary staff in 2013/14 and 2014/15

2013/14 £000s

2014/15 £000s

Total NHS Providers

2,605,378

3,355,723

Source: Department of Health Annual Report and Accounts 2014/15

The Department does not hold information on the total cost to the NHS of nurses from outside of the United Kingdom working in the service. The information provided in the table below shows the number of declared non-British nurses working in the NHS in England dating back to 2009. Non-British nursing numbers working in the NHS in England covers hospital and community health services in the NHS but not primary care.

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Non-British

40,034

41,642

40,911

40,030

40,330

43,258

Proportion of non-British nurses as % of the nursing workforce

14.4%

14.3%

13.8%

13.3%

13.0%

13.5%

Source: Health and Social Care Information Centre.