Javid shake-up opens the door to thousands of foreign doctors
‘Brightest and best skilled’
THOUSANDS more foreign doctors and nurses will be able to work in Britain after the Government relaxed visa rules.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid will today scrap migration controls to allow the NHS to recruit more staff.
It means other businesses and employers will be able to hire an extra 8,000 skilled non-EU workers, such as engineers, IT professionals and teachers.
The move is the first softening of a regime introduced seven years ago by now Prime Minister Theresa May.
But it will fuel criticism that the UK is failing to train up enough medical staff to fill empty NHS posts.
From July, doctors and nurses from outside the EU will be excluded from the so-called ‘Tier 2’ visa scheme which was introduced to help curb immigration. Currently the number of skilled workers allowed to work here is capped at 20,700 each year – in allocations of 1,725 a month.
The change means that the roughly 8,000 visas annually issued to health professionals will be available to other sectors.
Firms also currently have to pay each worker arriving through the scheme more than £30,000 a year. Ministers insisted the cap was vital to prevent businesses bringing in too many workers from overseas rather than employing Britons.
Places were limited as part of Mrs May’s policy of attempting to reduce net immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’.
But health chiefs have warned that limits on the number of visas issued to foreign doctors and nurses was contributing to rota gaps and delays in patients receiving care.
NHS bosses claim 2,300 doctors have been denied the chance to work here since November.
Yet health trusts say the NHS need an estimated 9,982 doctors to fill vacancies. Mr Javid and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt have succeeded in convincing Mrs May to relax the policy.
Mr Hunt said the removal of the cap would be time-limited until the NHS had trained enough British staff.
But critics have warned that hitting the target means closing the UK to the ‘brightest and best’ skilled jobseekers from around the world – potentially harming the British economy.
Mr Javid insisted the Government’s immigration policy was not being torn up. He said: ‘I recognise the pressures faced by the NHS and other sectors in recent months. Doctors and nurses play a vital role in society and at this time we need more in the UK.
‘This is about finding a solution to increased demand and to support our essential national services.’
Mr Hunt, who is putting in place measures to increase the supply of doctors, including raising the number of training places, said: ‘Overseas staff have been a vital part of our NHS since its creation 70 years ago.
‘This news sends a clear message to nurses and doctors from around the world that the NHS welcomes and values their skills and dedication.
‘It’s fantastic that patients will now benefit from the care of thousands more talented staff.’ Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: ‘Lifting the cap of Tier 2 visas for doctors and nurses wanting to work in the NHS is a fantastic and much-needed victory for common sense and patient care.’
But Alp Mehmet, vice- chairman of the Migrationwatch think-tank, said: ‘Bringing medical staff from overseas is no answer to short- sighted attitudes to recruitment and retention that have gone on for a generation now.
‘There are huge numbers of capable people here who are keen for a career in healthcare. Let’s invest more in them rather than rely on recruiting doctors and nurses from countries whose needs far outweigh our own.’