Jonathan Ashworth responds to government plans for annual payment to nursing students

Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to government plans for an annual payment to nursing students, said:

"The Conservative's policy of forcing would-be nurses to pay tuition fees has demonstrably failed in the last two years. While it is good to see that they have u-turned on their terrible policy position, nurses have called for additional funding to cover tuition fees too, not just living costs as the Tories promised in their manifesto. 

"The NHS is chronically short of staff, including over 40,000 nurses. The Tories now bear the burden of fixing the crisis in the NHS which ten years of their underfunding has created."