Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many doctors have been recruited by the NHS from overseas in each last five years.
The following tables show people with a non-United Kingdom nationality joining the National Health Service, not people who have been recruited directly from abroad.
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), but not staff working in primary care or in general practitioner surgeries, local authorities or other providers.
The following table shows the number of doctors with a nationality other than British joining NHS trusts and CCGs as at September 2019 and at each year since 2014 (headcount).
| September 2014-15 | September 2015-16 | September 2016-17 | September 2017-18 | September 2018-19 |
European Union | 2,259 | 2,262 | 2,087 | 2,117 | 2,088 |
European Economic Area (EEA) | 43 | 36 | 44 | 46 | 38 |
Rest of World | 3,161 | 3,374 | 3,872 | 4,675 | 6,670 |
Unknown | 791 | 807 | 1,143 | 931 | 713 |
The following table shows the number of nurses with a nationality other than British joining the NHS trusts and CCGs as at September 2019 and at each year since 2014 (headcount).
| September 2014-15 | September 2015-16 | September 2016-17 | September 2017-18 | September 2018-19 |
EU | 5,817 | 5,941 | 2,779 | 2,313 | 2,328 |
EEA | 21 | 17 | 12 | 17 | 18 |
Rest of World | 2,161 | 2,782 | 2,993 | 4,325 | 7,068 |
Unknown | 1,417 | 1,817 | 1,167 | 1,078 | 733 |