NHS: Immigration Rules

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the Royal College of Nursing figure I saw was closer to 3,000 than 7,000, but in a sense that is not what is important. What is important is that over the long run we train our own nurses in this country. Although we recruit some exceptionally wonderful nurses from places such as the Philippines, it does not seem a good long-term strategy to rely on recruiting nurses, often from third-world, quite poor countries, so I am very pleased that we are going to train 23,000 new nurses over the next five years. That is the right answer to any short-term, temporary shortage.

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, surely the central point is that we should review the policy of recruiting nurses from overseas, as I think my noble friend is indicating. Should we not in a bipartisan way now concentrate on training our own nurses in this country rather than permanently taking them from other countries, for example, in Africa, which often desperately need their care?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend; it cannot be right for a rich country such as ours to recruit nurses from much poorer countries. I will just say that the Philippines, for example, produces more nurses on a deliberate basis than it needs for itself, so that they can go overseas, usually for temporary periods, not permanently. Interestingly, over the last five years, the number of non-EU overseas nurses working in this country has reduced by 41%.