Government response to the Committee's Second Report: The nursing workforce

This is the government's response, published 23 July 2018.

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government welcomes the Committee's report and says it agrees on several points, including the need for retention support and "robust, timely and publicly available data" on nursing vacancies.

• On retention, it agrees it is "essential to have a robust programme to support trusts in retaining their staff", and says a second year of the NHS Improvement and NHS Employers programme starts in July 2018.
• On continuing professional development, it welcomes the Committee's commentary and agrees it is "a very important issue", but says it is "continuing to consider" the recommendations and will set out potential options "as soon as possible".
• On nursing associates, it does not want to set out a list of tasks they can and cannot perform, as this "will be too restrictive". It agrees further guidance on deployment should be developed, to be available by January 2019 when the first nursing associates are expected to be registered.
• On overseas recruitment, it says Health Education England "has committed to rapidly delivering this programme at scale", with the aim of recruiting over 1,000 nurses per year from 2018/19 onwards.

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