Shanice

I grew up in Norris Green watching my nan struggle to get proper care during her final illness. The nurses who did help her were rushed off their feet, doing the work of three people. Even at fourteen, I could see how the system was failing the people it was meant to serve. I knew then that I wanted to be the nurse who had time to hold someone's hand, who could spot the signs before they became emergencies.

For three years, I worked as a healthcare assistant at Aintree University Hospital, learning everything I could while saving every penny for nursing school. The ward sisters said I had a natural touch, that I understood what people needed before they asked for it. I loved the work, but I could see how much more I could do with proper training. Every shift, I watched qualified nurses make decisions I wasn't allowed to make, even when I knew what needed doing.

In 2019, I finally felt ready. Liverpool John Moores University accepted me onto their nursing degree. My references from Aintree were excellent. The course leader said they'd be delighted to have me. Then Health Education England told me there were no funded training places available. Just like that.

I tried Edge Hill University in 2020. Same story. The admissions tutor looked genuinely apologetic as she explained: "We'd love to have you, but HM Treasury has capped our training budgets and we simply cannot afford to fund any more places." She suggested I try again the following year, as though the Treasury might suddenly discover some forgotten millions down the back of a sofa.

I did try again in 2021. Edge Hill again, then back to Liverpool John Moores. Each time, the same phrase: "There is no funding." I started to think maybe I wasn't good enough, that the references and experience counted for nothing. The admissions staff kept saying it wasn't about me, it was about the budget, but when every door closes with the same excuse, you start to doubt yourself.

So I decided to self-fund. How hard could it be? I took on extra shifts at Aintree, working every weekend, picking up nights when other healthcare assistants called in sick. The maths were brutal. Even with my staff discount and a maintenance loan, the fees were impossible on healthcare assistant wages. I was looking at years of debt just to get the qualification that would let me do the job I was already halfway competent at.

Then, in 2022, something happened that changed how I understood the whole system. I was chatting to Sarah, a healthcare assistant from the Royal Liverpool, and she mentioned that her daughter had just started at Liverpool John Moores. "Lucky her," I said. "Getting a funded place." Sarah laughed. "She's not funded. We're paying the full whack. Twenty-seven thousand a year."

That got me thinking. If Sarah's family could afford it and mine couldn't, how many other people like me were being locked out? I started asking around. Within two weeks, I'd spoken to dozens of healthcare assistants from across Merseyside who desperately wanted to train as nurses but couldn't get funding. We were all doing the same work, all passionate about healthcare, all blocked by the same phrase: "There is no funding."

Then I discovered something that made no sense at all. Liverpool John Moores had 47 unfilled nursing places that year. Forty-seven. The places existed, the lecturers existed, the equipment existed. They just couldn't recruit enough students who could afford the fees.

I went to see for myself. The university's nursing building was magnificent: state-of-the-art simulation wards with the latest equipment, mock hospital rooms that looked more modern than the actual wards at Aintree. But when I visited on a Wednesday afternoon, the place was half-empty. The simulation wards were sitting unused. Equipment worth millions was gathering dust because there weren't enough funded students to use it.

I stood in that empty training ward and something clicked. The people existed: me and Sarah and dozens of others ready to train. The building existed. The lecturers existed. The equipment existed. The need certainly existed: every shift at Aintree proved that. What exactly was it that "there is no money" for?

The government that prints every pound note in my wallet, that mints every coin in the charity collection at the hospital reception, was telling me it could not find enough of those pounds to connect the people who wanted to learn with the places where they could learn. It was the same government that had somehow found billions for bank bailouts during the financial crisis, that could create money for quantitative easing, that never seemed to struggle when it came to funding tax cuts for corporations.

I started to understand that "there is no funding" wasn't a fact about the world. It was a choice about priorities, dressed up in the language of impossibility. The real question was never whether the money existed. Money is just numbers on computers when you're the government that controls those computers. The real question was whether the people existed, whether the skills could be taught, whether the materials were available. They were. All of them.

Now I see "there is no funding" everywhere, and I hear it differently. When the NHS says it cannot afford to train nurses, but the empty training wards prove the capacity exists, I know we're not talking about money. We're talking about a political choice to keep that capacity unused. When Health Education England says the budget is capped, I know the cap is not imposed by economic reality but by a Treasury that treats public investment like a household treats its credit card limit.

I'm still at Aintree, still working as a healthcare assistant. But I'm not waiting anymore for someone in Westminster to find the money they pretend they've lost. I know the limit was never the pounds. The limit was the willingness to spend those pounds into the training that would put qualified nurses on the wards where patients need them.

This isn't just my story. It's the story of every constituency where people and needs exist side by side while someone with the power to connect them says the cupboard is bare. The cupboard was never bare. It was locked.