Helen Whately, the care minister, is being tarred and feathered. She wrote a letter to an MP about student nurses, saying they are ‘supernumerary and not deemed to be providing a service’.
The outpouring of fury online and, sadly, from some traditional media outlets provides an object lesson in all that’s wrong with the way Britain debates politics and government in the era of Twitter.
Whately’s comments should not be ‘controversial’ or even newsworthy, because she said nothing wrong.
Student nurses are indeed ‘supernumerary’, which means that they are not counted towards the total of nursing staff in the NHS. This is not just sensible, it’s something recognised and demanded by bodies such as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
The RCN says that keeping student nurses out of the numbers for NHS nurses is about patient safety: it stops ministers using students as substitutes for fully-qualified staff.
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