“Boris Johnson has promised an extra 50,000 NHS nurses by 2025. Part of the package is a return to providing bursaries for nursing students, to support them while they gain vital professional qualifications. This might seem like a welcome proposal, until you realise the entire policy is built on sand, propped up with deception and lies, and amounts to an insult to the brilliant and hardworking staff of the NHS.

Bursaries were axed at the insistence of the Tories in 2016, despite clear warnings from health unions, professional associations, and nurses themselves that this would be detrimental to the recruitment and retention of nurses.

Figures released by UCAS show that the number of people applying to study nursing in England has fallen by more than 13,000 since the bursary was scrapped. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) points out that the numbers of mature students applying has also fallen by 41%. They say there are about 40,000 nursing vacancies in England. The prime minister’s pledge to reinstate the bursary is welcome, but merely rights a wrong, and does nothing to plug a three-year gap in recruitment.

Then there is the prime minister’s flagship Brexit plan. The uncertainty and threat of economic chaos has already meant the NHS has lost 5,000 nurses from other EU nations. There has been a huge fall in the numbers of nurses from other EU countries coming to the UK to work for the NHS. This is hardly a surprise given the toxic political culture and sense that they are unwelcome.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-nurses-nhs-pledge-numbers-a9218446.html