Jamal

I've always believed that if you see a problem, you try to fix it. That's what drew me to healthcare in the first place. After watching my mum wait months for proper diabetes care, sitting in those packed GP waiting rooms, I knew I wanted to be part of the solution. I'd left school at 16 to work in my uncle's corner shop in Norris Green, always regretting that I hadn't finished my education properly. But at 28, after years of stacking shelves at ASDA on night shifts while studying for my NVQ, I finally had my healthcare assistant qualification. It felt like the beginning of something bigger.

I wanted to become a registered nurse. The need was obvious - every shift at the hospital, we were understaffed, overworked, watching qualified nurses burn out while patients waited longer than they should. I had the experience, the motivation, and I'd proven I could study while working. The path seemed clear: apply to Liverpool John Moores University for their nursing degree.

In 2019, I submitted my application and was accepted. The letter came through in March, and for about two hours, I felt like everything was falling into place. Then I read the small print. The NHS bursary places were full. If I wanted to start that September, I'd need to self-fund £27,000. Twenty-seven thousand pounds. I was earning £18,000 a year at ASDA and sending money home to help with mum's prescriptions. There was no way I could find that kind of money.

I called the university. They were sympathetic but firm: "We'd love to have you, Jamal, but the funded places are allocated by Health Education England. You'd need to speak to them about additional funding." So I did. I took a day off work and travelled to the Health Education England North West office in Manchester. The receptionist directed me to a waiting room with plastic chairs and NHS posters about hand hygiene.

When I finally met with the workforce planning officer, she listened to my situation with what seemed like genuine concern. "I understand your frustration," she said, "but we simply don't have the budget for additional training places this year. Treasury spending limits, you understand. We're allocated a fixed amount, and once that's gone, that's it." She handed me a leaflet about career development loans and suggested I try again next year.

I applied again in 2020. Same response. The workforce planning officer - a different one this time - used almost identical words: "There is no funding for additional places. The budget has been cut again this year." I asked about the nursing shortage they kept talking about in the news. "Oh yes," she said, "we desperately need more nurses. But we can only train the number we can afford to fund."

2021 was the same story. By then I was volunteering at Aintree University Hospital on my days off, helping with basic patient care, trying to stay connected to the profession I wanted to join. "We cannot afford to run that programme at full capacity," the Health Education England officer told me when I called. "Perhaps consider other healthcare roles?"

But volunteering at Aintree showed me something that didn't add up. The wards I worked on were constantly staffed by agency nurses. These weren't short-term emergency cover - these were permanent agency contracts, nurses working the same shifts week after week, month after month. I got talking to some of them during breaks. They were earning £35-40 an hour through the agency, while permanent NHS nurses earned £15-18. The hospital was paying triple the cost for the same work.

I mentioned this to one of the permanent staff nurses, Sarah, during a particularly busy shift. "Why doesn't the hospital just hire more permanent nurses instead of using agencies?" I asked. She laughed, but not in a funny way. "Because they don't have the budget for permanent posts," she said. "But they can always find money for agencies. Don't ask me to explain it - it makes no sense."

2022 brought the same rejection. But by then I'd started walking past the Liverpool John Moores University nursing building on my way home from volunteer shifts. It's a modern building, opened about five years ago, with big windows you can see through from the street. What I saw made me stop and think.

Every evening after 4pm, the building was nearly empty. Lecture theatres that could hold 200 students sat dark. The simulation labs - I could see them from the ground floor windows - had equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds just sitting there. Mannequins designed to simulate heart attacks, breathing problems, emergency scenarios. All of it unused after teaching hours. The security guard told me the building was locked up every evening at 6pm and didn't open again until 8am.

Here was the contradiction I couldn't ignore. In the morning meetings at Aintree, managers complained about nursing shortages and agency costs. At the Health Education England office, they said there was no capacity for more training places. But every evening, I could see the capacity with my own eyes. Empty lecture theatres. Unused equipment. A building designed to train nurses, sitting idle for 14 hours a day.

I started asking different questions when I called Health Education England in 2023. "You say there's no capacity, but the university has empty classrooms every evening. You say there's no money, but the hospital is paying triple rates for agency staff. What exactly is it that there's no money for?"

The officer went quiet for a moment. Then: "The Treasury sets our budget. We can only fund the training places we're allocated funding for. That's just how the system works."

That's when something clicked for me. The government that issues the pound was telling me it couldn't find enough pounds to connect willing students to empty classrooms to urgent vacancies. The same government was watching NHS trusts spend three times as much on agency staff while saying it couldn't afford to train permanent staff. The people existed - I was one of them. The facilities existed - I walked past them every day. The need existed - every shift proved it.

The excuse was never about money. It was about whether someone in Westminster chose to spend the money that would connect these pieces. They chose not to. Then they dressed that political choice in the language of accounting, as though they were a household that had checked their wallet and found it empty.

I used to accept that explanation. It sounded reasonable: budgets are finite, choices have to be made. But governments aren't households. They issue their own currency. The real question was never whether they could afford to train more nurses. It was whether they wanted to.

Now I understand this isn't just my story. It's happening across every constituency where people are ready to work, facilities are sitting empty, and someone in a government office says the cupboard is bare. The cupboard was never bare. The decision to keep it locked was always a choice.