Britain ‘strip mining’ healthcare workers from vulnerable nations

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, warned in its annual report to Parliament: “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.”

Dr David Bull, deputy leader of the Reform Party, called for healthcare workers to be encouraged to return to their home countries.

“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,” Dr Bull said.

“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.”

As part of its Code of Practice, the Department of Health 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”. Five of the top seven countries of origin for healthcare workers arriving from late 2020 are on the list of vulnerable nations. 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.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said a record number of domestically-trained nurses joined the NHS in the first half of the year and the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan will expand domestic education, training and recruitment.