A busy morning in the office, working on constituency matters. A sandwich lunch and then to Wool to hold two appointments at our Association HQs. The first was with the newly appointed Enterprise Zone Manager, Sarah Powell-Pisareva. She could not have been nicer and more determined to ensure the Government-selected site is a success. It promises c2,000 jobs in the years ahead. The task now is to attract high-tech firms to move there and that's what Sarah wanted to chat to me about. She wants the new unitary authority to make the zone a top priority when it is formed this April. Newly elected councillors will be reminded of the significance of this asset and their support will be expected. I have written to both the CEO designate, my friend Matt Prosser, and to Jake Berry, the helpful Government minister, whose portfolio this zone falls into. Next I met the charming Julie Connelly, who is the RCN's senior regional officer. We have chatted before and I have always found Julie to be courteous, helpful and pragmatic. We chatted about the shortage of nurses and doctors and the problems of both attracting trainees and then supervising them properly when in training. I have written to the minister Stephen Hammond, setting out Julie's concerns. My own view is that we need to return to the bursary scheme, which was very popular, regrettably too much so. The Government found they could not afford it in the end and adopted the same system used by university students. There are a number of other initiatives to attract new nurses that on the surface are appealing, like the apprenticeship. But hospitals are finding they do not have enough trained staff to keep an eye on new trainees coming through on all these schemes.