Brexit has left the NHS more and more depending on medical doctors and nurses from poor “red list” countries, from which the World Well being Group says it’s improper to recruit.
The well being service in England has employed tens of 1000’s of well being employees from nations resembling Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe because the UK left the EU single market on the finish of 2020.
A post-Brexit surge within the variety of well being professionals from purple listing nations working in England has sparked criticism that hiring so many is “unethical” and “immoral”, and can injury these nations’ well being programs.
The massive leap means the NHS now employs 65,610 clinicians and assist employees from the 53 red list countries in its 1.5 million-strong workforce. It has taken on 32,935 of these because the begin of 2021, together with 20,665 who joined within the 20 months between March 2023 and November 2024 alone, in line with NHS figures obtained by the Nuffield Belief well being thinktank.
The expansion in purple list-origin employees has been so dramatic that one in 11 (9%) of all medics in England are actually from purple listing states, and two-thirds (46,890) of all of the nurses who started working within the UK between January 2021 and September 2024 had been skilled exterior the UK or Financial Space.
Since 2018, 46% of extra UK nurses from purple listing nations have come from Nigeria, 21% from Ghana and 16% from Zimbabwe.
Mark Dayan, a coverage analyst on the thinktank and Brexit programme lead, mentioned: “Recruiting on this scale, from nations the World Health Organization consider have troublingly few employees, is tough to justify ethically for a nonetheless a lot wealthier nation.
“But once more, British failure to coach sufficient healthcare employees has been bailed out by these skilled abroad.”
The ending of the free motion of labour into the UK by EU nationals from the beginning of 2021 had created a harmful “over-reliance” by the NHS on clinicians from red-list nations in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, the thinktank’s report on well being within the UK after Brexit says.
“Significantly because the finish of free motion of labour at first of 2021, a remarkably steep and sustained improve in employees skilled or holding nationalities exterior the UK and EU has occurred,” says the report, printed on Friday.
NHS England figures, which the thinktank obtained below freedom of knowledge legal guidelines, present the variety of red-list nurses working in England rose 36% to 21,500 between March 2023 and November 2024. The variety of medical doctors elevated over the identical interval by 24% to 13,675, whereas the variety of employees who assist medical doctors and nurses soared by 74% to 21,600.
The findings elevate questions on whether or not the NHS is adhering to the WHO’s edict to not “actively recruit” well being professionals from the 55 nations, which has been endorsed by the Division of Well being and Social Care on behalf of the UK authorities. The WHO advises in opposition to recruitment from these nations as a result of they “face essentially the most urgent well being workforce challenges associated to common well being protection” and have too few personnel to care correctly for their very own populations.
The figures prompted Wes Streeting to accuse the NHS of appearing in an “immoral” method by depriving needy nations of homegrown well being professionals.
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“The NHS has been left within the immoral place of pinching medical doctors and nurses from nations which desperately want them, as a result of the Conservatives couldn’t be bothered to coach sufficient medics,” the well being secretary mentioned.
“On the identical time, straight-A college students on this nation have been locked out of medical college, and we’re failing to convey sufficient younger individuals into the nursing and caring professions.”
He mentioned he was “decided to cut back the NHS’s reliance on recruitment from red-list nations by investing in coaching the following era of NHS employees by our plan for change”. Officers are drawing up a revised model of the NHS long-term workforce plan printed by the earlier Conservative authorities in 2023, which included a serious enlargement of UK-trained employees.
Ageing populations worldwide have created a world race to rent medical doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants and different specialist employees, with wealthy nations more and more turning to employees skilled in Asia and Africa. Ten high-income nations – together with the UK, US, Australia and Saudi Arabia – account for 70% of the worldwide migration of well being professionals.
Sebastian Rees, the pinnacle of well being on the IPPR thinktank, mentioned: “Whereas the NHS advantages massively from the expertise and abilities of employees skilled abroad, its over-reliance on recruitment from red-list nations is each unethical and unsustainable.
“Recruiting from these nations dangers damaging fragile healthcare programs and undermines longstanding efforts to increase medical care to those that want it most – the world’s poorest.”
Nevertheless Jim Campbell, the WHO’s director of workforce, mentioned most of the red-list employees had utilized straight for jobs within the UK and due to this fact “unethical” recruitment by the NHS was a lot much less widespread than the Nuffield Belief’s total numbers advised.
“That is startling knowledge and raises moral questions. However behind the headline knowledge there’s numerous discussions happening between [the UK and other] governments about graduates searching for profession alternatives by becoming a member of the NHS and doing jobs that they wouldn’t be capable to do in their very own nations. There’s lots of people in that class,” he mentioned.
