Steven Edginton
22 December 2023
Britain has awarded 106,788 entry visas to healthcare professionals from countries which the World Health Organisation wants to safeguard against recruitment
- MARTIN PRESCOTT/iSTOCKPHOTO
Half of all foreign healthcare professionals who have arrived in Britain since 2020 came from the “world’s most fragile health systems”, analysis shows.
The Centre for Migration Control (CMC) revealed that in that period the UK has awarded 106,788 entry visas to healthcare professionals from countries described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as requiring “additional safeguards that limit active international recruitment”.
Findings from the CMC, a new think tank focused on reducing migration, show that since the Skilled Worker and Healthcare visa was introduced at the end of 2020, of the 222,308 visas awarded, 48 per cent were given to individuals from fragile healthcare systems.
There are 55 countries on the WHO’s “health workforce support and safeguards list”, the so-called “red list”.
Last week the Migration Advisory Committee, a government body that advises the Home Office, in its annual report to Parliament warned: “The labour shortages in health and social care sectors in red list countries are in part due to the workforce crisis caused by health and social care workers leaving their home countries.
“[The] Government should consider careful planning within the UK to reduce reliance and consequent negative effects on red list countries.”
In response to the figures, Dr David Bull, the deputy leader of the Reform Party, called for health care workers to be encouraged to return to their home countries.
Dr Bull said: “We should train our own people to work within health and social care, bringing back the nursing bursaries that were cut by the Tories under Cameron and Osborne, whilst encouraging the return of trained personnel to their home countries.
“They will return to help build those countries’ healthcare systems and help to cut the vast numbers of legal migrants and their dependants that are coming to this country in their hundreds of thousands every year.”
“It is a moral disgrace that this country is strip mining human resources from the poorest and most needy countries in the world, while we have 770,000 under 25 not in employment, education or training amongst the 8.6 million economically inactive people in Britain.”
As part of its Code of Practice, the Department of Health and Social Care says “health and social care organisations in England do not actively recruit from those countries the World Health Organisation recognise as having the most pressing health and care workforce-related challenges”.
In March, discussing the need for the red list, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said: “Health workers are the backbone of every health system, and yet 55 countries with some of the world’s most fragile health systems do not have enough and many are losing their health workers to international migration.”
Five of the top seven countries of origin for healthcare workers arriving in the UK on a visa from late 2020 are on the list of vulnerable nations.
‘Giving with one hand’
Visas were given to 38,003 people from Nigeria, 24,976 from Zimbabwe, 15,391 from Ghana, 10,054 from Pakistan and 8,135 from Bangladesh, all of which are on the red list.
Robert Bates, research director at the Centre for Migration Control, said: “Every year the British Government spends hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money to develop the healthcare systems of the world’s poorest nations. These figures show that they are giving with one hand and taking with the other, whilst running roughshod over their own code of practice.
“There is simply no need for the UK to be reliant on foreign healthcare professionals. Every year thousands of young Brits are turned away from studying medicine and healthcare, rather than being trained up to work in the NHS, as important studies by Migration Watch have shown.”
“Doctors and nurses from Zimbabwe and Bangladesh should be strengthening the domestic capacity of their own nation, not plugging gaps caused by UK underfunding. We need to adopt a model that ensures the world’s most vulnerable healthcare systems are able to retain and re-attract their own domestically trained professionals.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “A record number of domestically-trained nurses joined the NHS in the first half of this year – and that number is increasing, alongside continued international recruitment of talented and dedicated nurses from across the world.
“The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan – backed by more than £2.4 billion – will significantly expand domestic education, training and recruitment and deliver more healthcare professionals than ever before.
“All international recruitment of health and care workers must be done ethically. This is why we do not actively recruit from the countries the WHO recognises as having the most pressing workforce challenges.”
Half of all foreign healthcare professionals who have arrived in Britain since 2020 came from the “world’s most fragile health systems”, analysis shows.
The Centre for Migration Control (CMC) revealed that in that period the UK has awarded 106,788 entry visas to healthcare professionals from countries described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as requiring “additional safeguards that limit active international recruitment”.
Findings from the CMC, a new think tank focused on reducing migration, show that since the Skilled Worker and Healthcare visa was introduced at the end of 2020, of the 222,308 visas awarded, 48 per cent were given to individuals from fragile healthcare systems.
There are 55 countries on the WHO’s “health workforce support and safeguards list”, the so-called “red list”.
Last week the Migration Advisory Committee, a government body that advises the Home Office, in its annual report to Parliament warned: “The labour shortages in health and social care sectors in red list countries are in part due to the workforce crisis caused by health and social care workers leaving their home countries.
“[The] Government should consider careful planning within the UK to reduce reliance and consequent negative effects on red list countries.”
In response to the figures, Dr David Bull, the deputy leader of the Reform Party, called for health care workers to be encouraged to return to their home countries.
Dr Bull said: “We should train our own people to work within health and social care, bringing back the nursing bursaries that were cut by the Tories under Cameron and Osborne, whilst encouraging the return of trained personnel to their home countries.
“They will return to help build those countries’ healthcare systems and help to cut the vast numbers of legal migrants and their dependants that are coming to this country in their hundreds of thousands every year.”
“It is a moral disgrace that this country is strip mining human resources from the poorest and most needy countries in the world, while we have 770,000 under 25 not in employment, education or training amongst the 8.6 million economically inactive people in Britain.”
As part of its Code of Practice, the Department of Health and Social Care says “health and social care organisations in England do not actively recruit from those countries the World Health Organisation recognise as having the most pressing health and care workforce-related challenges”.
In March, discussing the need for the red list, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said: “Health workers are the backbone of every health system, and yet 55 countries with some of the world’s most fragile health systems do not have enough and many are losing their health workers to international migration.”
Five of the top seven countries of origin for healthcare workers arriving in the UK on a visa from late 2020 are on the list of vulnerable nations.
‘Giving with one hand’
Visas were given to 38,003 people from Nigeria, 24,976 from Zimbabwe, 15,391 from Ghana, 10,054 from Pakistan and 8,135 from Bangladesh, all of which are on the red list.
Robert Bates, research director at the Centre for Migration Control, said: “Every year the British Government spends hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money to develop the healthcare systems of the world’s poorest nations. These figures show that they are giving with one hand and taking with the other, whilst running roughshod over their own code of practice.
“There is simply no need for the UK to be reliant on foreign healthcare professionals. Every year thousands of young Brits are turned away from studying medicine and healthcare, rather than being trained up to work in the NHS, as important studies by Migration Watch have shown.”
“Doctors and nurses from Zimbabwe and Bangladesh should be strengthening the domestic capacity of their own nation, not plugging gaps caused by UK underfunding. We need to adopt a model that ensures the world’s most vulnerable healthcare systems are able to retain and re-attract their own domestically trained professionals.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “A record number of domestically-trained nurses joined the NHS in the first half of this year – and that number is increasing, alongside continued international recruitment of talented and dedicated nurses from across the world.
“The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan – backed by more than £2.4 billion – will significantly expand domestic education, training and recruitment and deliver more healthcare professionals than ever before.
“All international recruitment of health and care workers must be done ethically. This is why we do not actively recruit from the countries the WHO recognises as having the most pressing workforce challenges.”
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