Anti-immigrant government policies threaten 50,000 nurses and up to 42% of doctors working in the medical profession. 

New visa rules threaten 50,000 nursing staff, and up to 42% of doctors could be driven out as Britain feels less and less welcoming, which would leave massive holes in the workforce. 

Research from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) suggests that up to 50,000 migrant nursing staff could leave the UK if ministers press ahead with plans to extend the qualifying period to apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). 

Prime minister Keir Starmer has vowed to curb net migration, and in parliament in late November, home secretary Shabana Mahmood said that the 2 million people who had arrived in the country since 2021 will now have to wait 10 years for permanent settlement.

Without ILR, migrant nursing staff are unable to move easily between jobs with their visas tying them to their employers. Not only is this expensive (application fees for ILR are £3,029), many have said it has led to exploitation in the social care system. It also leaves them unable to access state support like child benefit and disability support payments despite paying taxes in the UK and facing a greater risk of financial hardship than their UK-trained colleagues, as they are subject to the no recourse to public funds condition.

“This is no way to repay [migrant nursing staff] and amounts to a betrayal,” said RCN general secretary and chief executive Nicola Ranger. “Our international colleagues deserve clarity over their futures, not to be used as political footballs by politicians and left unable to access state support despite working in public services and paying taxes,” she continued. 

Dangerous for patients

The RCN said that it had surveyed more than 5,000 migrant nursing staff:  60% of those who don’t have ILR say the decision to extend the qualifying period would “very likely” affect their decision to remain in the UK. Mapped against the number of migrant nursing staff currently on entry clearance visas, it means as many as 46,000 migrant nursing staff could be at risk of leaving the UK.

The proposals have created profound distress among migrant nursing staff, with 53% extremely concerned about the impact on their financial security, 52% extremely concerned about the impact on their family life, and a further 49% extremely concerned about the impact on their career, the research says.

The proposals could damage the pool of internationally educated nursing staff coming to the UK, with only 11% of respondents saying they would have come to the country had the route to settlement originally been ten years.

“These proposals are not just immoral; they would be dangerous for our patients. No minister who has any interest in the success of our health and social care system would press ahead with extending the qualifying period for ILR,” said Ranger. 

Undermining Britain’s image

At the same time, in the first significant year-on-year rise since the pandemic, data in the regulator’s report on the state of medical education and practice in the UK show that 4,880 doctors, who obtained their primary medical qualification outside of the UK and who had been working in the UK, left last year. This is a 26% increase on the previous year’s 3,869.

“Doctors represent a mobile workforce, whose skills are in high demand around the world,” said Charlie Massey, chief executive of the General Medical Council. “Internationally qualified doctors who have historically chosen to work in the UK could quite conceivably choose to leave if they feel they have no future job progression here, or if the country feels less welcoming,” he added. 

Any hardening of rhetoric and falling away of support could undermine the UK’s image as somewhere the “brightest and the best” from all over the world want to work, he continued. 

Massey pointed out that doctors who qualified outside of the UK make up 42% of those working in the UK, and if there is even a small percentage increase in them leaving, then the health services would end up with holes that the government would struggle to fill. More to the point, this problem would be compounded in general practice, where half of first-year trainees last year qualified outside of the UK.