LABOUR’S shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has forced the government to hold a binding vote on its plans to abolish bursaries for nursing students.

The Tories have already axed the NHS bursary for most undergraduate nursing courses and are now trying to go the whole hog by pushing post-graduate, part-time and dental nursing students into the student loans system.

Ministers tried to force the change through using a statutory instrument, which can be passed without a debate or a vote in Parliament, but backed down after Ms Rayner led a fightback against this attempt to avoid parliamentary scrutiny.

She won a ruling by Commons Speaker John Bercow that forced ministers to revoke their own regulations and table new legislation in order to allow a binding vote after the Easter recess.

Ms Rayner said scrapping NHS bursaries was “both regressive and counterproductive” and accused the government of trying to “sneak this latest move through without letting it even go to the Commons.”