UK

 More than 5,000 early-career nursing staff quit profession in one year

A total of 27,168 nursing and midwifery staff left the profession between April 2023 and March 2024 (PA)

By Storm Newton, Health Reporter

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A fifth of the nursing and midwifery professionals who left the register in the last year did so within 10 years of joining, figures show.

Nursing leaders described the statistic as “deeply alarming” and called on ministers to “grasp the nettle and make nursing an attractive career”.

The latest Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) annual report on its register of nurses, midwives and nursing associates in the UK shows 27,168 staff left the profession between April 2023 and March 2024, a slight decrease on the previous 12 months.

However, 20.3% of the total – or 5,508 – did so within the first 10 years.

This is compared to 18.8% in 2020/2021 and “reflects a rise over the last three years”, according to the report.

Working in understaffed, under-resourced services is taking its toll, with poor physical health, mental health and burnout pushing highly-trained nursing staff out the door

Prof Nicola Ranger, RCN

Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: “It is deeply alarming that over 5,000 young, early-career nursing staff chose to quit the profession last year, most vowing never to return.

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“When the vacancy rate is high and care standards often poor due to staffing levels, the NHS cannot afford to lose a single individual.

“New ministers have to grasp the nettle and make nursing an attractive career.”

The NMC invited a portion of the staff who left the register between January 2023 and March 2024 – a total of 32,950 professionals – to complete a leavers survey, which attracted 7,647 responses.

It found retirement, poor health and burnout were the top three reasons why staff left.

The new Government under Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, right, has been urged to ‘step in and rescue the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan’ (PA)

Of the leavers, 49% said they left the profession earlier than expected.

The proportion of staff likely to return to a career in nursing or midwifery remained low at 8%, although one in three said they would consider working outside the UK.

Prof Ranger added: “Working in understaffed, under-resourced services is taking its toll, with poor physical health, mental health and burnout pushing highly-trained nursing staff out the door. This is a tragedy for patient care.

“The reality for the Government is that international recruitment is masking the failure to recruit enough domestic nursing staff, with equal numbers joining services from overseas.

“Our migrant nursing staff are incredible and vital to the delivery of our health and care services, but this over-reliance is unsustainable and unethical.

“The new Government must step in and rescue the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.” ​

826,418

The number of nurses, midwives and nursing associates on the NMC register

The figures on leavers comes as the NMC report revealed there are now more nurses, midwives and nursing associates on its register than ever, at 826,418.

The total is 4.8% – or 37,723 – higher than 12 months ago, and 18.4% higher than five years ago.

The NMC welcomed the record numbers “given the challenges of increasing demand for health and social care services, changing needs and workforce pressures”.

Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “It’s great to see more NHS nurses, midwives and nursing associates than ever before, but the hard part now is holding on to them.

“It’s a big worry that a survey of leavers found almost half quit the profession earlier than planned, many blaming burnout and poor physical and mental health.

“While the aim of the year-old Long Term Workforce Plan for the NHS is to establish a more sustainable supply of trained home-grown staff, the figures show that half of those on the register still come from abroad.

“With almost one in three people on the register from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, it’s vital that we keep working hard to ensure that the NHS is a great place to work – inclusive, promoting equality and combating discrimination.”

‘Fanatic’ Extinction Rebellion founder gets record jail sentence

Daily Telegraph UK
By: Emma Gatten , Robert Mendick and Cameron Henderson
18 Jul, 2024 


Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, has been given a record five-year prison sentence. Photo / X

The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been given a record five-year prison sentence in the UK after a judge said he had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.

Roger Hallam was found guilty of conspiring to block traffic as part of a Just Stop Oil campaign on London’s M25 motorway over four days of disruption in November 2022.

The Attorney-General for England and Wales was under pressure on Thursday night to intervene over the sentences meted out to Hallam, who also set up Just Stop Oil, and his co-conspirators, which are the longest for non-violent protest in living memory.

Four other eco-activists were each given four-year sentences after they were found guilty of conspiring to block traffic on the M25.

The sentences were welcomed by Conservative MPs but widely condemned by celebrities Chris Packham and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and green campaigners, including Labour’s biggest corporate donor.

The case threatens to become a cause celebre among Labour activists, opening up a potential rift in the party for new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

In opposition, Labour voted against the policing bill that introduced the new powers to jail the activists.

Dale Vince, the green energy tycoon who gave £1 million ($2.1 million) to Labour earlier in 2024, urged Sir Keir to step in to reverse the “injustice” while supporters cheered as the prisoners were taken from court to prison on Thursday afternoon.

The sentences also attracted international condemnation with the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders describing it as a “dark day” in an intervention that will infuriate lawmakers who have tried to clamp down on disruptive eco-protests.

Southwark Crown Court had heard that each of the defendants had recruited activists over a Zoom call to take part in the motorway demonstration, which the prosecution said had caused economic damage of nearly £750,000 and cost the police £1 million.

The protests unfolded over four days from November 7, with 45 activists climbing up different gantries across the M25.

Five prosecuted under new law of conspiracy

Hallam and his fellow defendants were prosecuted under a new law of conspiracy intentionally to cause a public nuisance introduced by the last Tory government in an attempt to crack down on disruptive protests.

Judge Christopher Hehir told the five eco-plotters: “I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns are shared by many, but the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic.

“You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change.”

The judge said the protests organised over a Zoom call had been “intricately planned”.

During the online conference call to arrange the demonstration, Hallam had boasted of “the potential to create gridlock”, telling activists: “It makes it absolutely impossible for this government to ignore … It has to be done, it has to be done, that is what I have got to say.”

The five protest organisers were convicted of conspiracy to intentionally cause a public nuisance. The court heard they organised “height training”, teaching activists how to climb motorway gantries, and rehearsed a “blue lights policy” to let police pass on the motorway.

Only two of the protesters jailed – Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 34, and Cressida Gethin, 22 – intended to climb the gantries, while Hallam, Daniel Shaw, 38 and Louise Lancaster, 58, remained on the ground.

Judge Hehir said the disruption had affected every section of the motorway, the crucial artery around London.

Protest ‘caused more than 50,000 hours of traffic delay’

The disruption allegedly caused more than 50,000 hours of traffic delay, affecting the journeys of more than 700,000 vehicles. Two lorries collided and an Essex police officer suffered concussion and bruising after he was knocked off his motorbike in traffic.

“People missed flights, people missed funerals, students were delayed for their mock exam,” said the judge. “A child with special needs on his way to school missed part of the school day and [missed] his medication which placed the taxi driver at risk as he can become volatile without his medication.

“An individual suffering from aggressive cancer missed an appointment as a cancer patient and had to wait another two months for another appointment.”

Tony Bambury, a motorist, said at the time that the disruption caused him to miss his father’s funeral after he was caught up in queues of traffic on his journey from Aylesbury to Essex.

The court heard that AirBnBs were booked near to the gantries and used as “safe houses” where the activists would go two days before their “climb”.

The sentences exceeded those handed out in 2023 to two other Just Stop Oil activists who were jailed for climbing the Queen Elizabeth II bridge on the Dartford Crossing.

In a defiant statement released after he was jailed, Hallam insisted his only crime had been: “Giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective, evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction.”

Morgan Trowland, a Kiwi activist, was jailed for three years for a protest atop the QEII Bridge. Photo / Just Stop Oil

He had previously said he had suffered the “indignity of the British courtroom”, accusing the judge during his trial of dismissing his fears over the climate.

“The judge stated that ‘whether or not we are facing the end of the world is neither here nor there’ and that humanity ‘coming to a fiery end’ was irrelevant,” Hallam wrote on his website, adding: “He [the judge] then ordered me to be forcibly dragged out of the court by the police and remanded to prison. This is the indignity of a British courtroom.”

During the trial the judge had repeatedly tried to stop Hallam from trying to lecture the jury on points of law, but he was allowed to discuss the threat of climate change and how it justified his actions at length.

Eleven people were arrested for contempt on July 2 for allegedly attempting to influence jurors trying the case.

They were holding placards outside court saying: “Juries deserve to hear the whole truth” and “Juries have the absolute right to acquit a defendant on their conscience”.

Speaking outside Southwark Crown Court where the five activists were sentenced on Thursday, Vince described the judge’s ruling as “harsh” and “undemocratic”.

Addressing the new Labour Government, he said: “I do hope they intervene because it is an injustice to give four or five years to people who simply protest.”

Packham, the TV naturalist, called for a meeting with the new Attorney General Richard Hermer “as rapidly as possible so that I and others can address this grotesque miscarriage of justice”.

Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall said the protesters had been “really viciously sentenced under some extraordinary, wicked, malicious legislation”, and the laws had been put in place to “protect a version of business-as-usual”.

A senior Labour source said the British government had no powers to intervene in the case and no plans to change the tougher sentencing laws brought in by the Conservatives.

The sentencing was condemned by Michael Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who said it was a “dark day”.

“Today marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom.”

Priti Patel, the former home secretary who introduced tougher laws against protesters, welcomed the “long overdue” sentences.

“With the Labour Government now letting thousands of criminals out of prison early they cannot be trusted to protect the public and Britain’s hard-working, law-abiding majority,” she said.

Suella Braverman, who was home secretary at the time of the disruption, said: “Whilst the right to protest is fundamental in a democracy, we must be aware that harm and disruption caused to others is unlawful.”