Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect of the Government's Immigration White Paper on the level of staffing for (a) clinical roles in the NHS, (b) non-clinical roles in the NHS and (c) the social care sector.

The White Paper sets out a new immigration system that will work in the interests of the United Kingdom. The future system will focus on high skills, welcoming talented and hardworking individuals that will support the UK’s dynamic economy, brilliant National Health Service and indispensable social care services.

For skilled migrants there will be no cap on numbers. This will mean that all skilled roles – whether clinical or non-clinical – will benefit from the certainty that already exists for doctors and nurses, will give the NHS and social care providers the confidence that they will be able to bring in any suitably skilled migrant and enable the Government to process cases immediately. We will also abolish the Resident Labour Market Test for skilled workers – this will remove a month from the process of recruiting from overseas.

We will also introduce a time limited route for temporary short-term workers of all skill levels. It is likely, however, that there could be some decrease in the flow of so called lower skilled workers from abroad. We know we need to redouble our efforts to promote jobs in the NHS and social care to the domestic workforce and we have has made improving the working lives of the millions of people who work in health and social care one of our top priorities, and why we have launched recruitment campaigns for both the NHS and social care. We are also clear that we want the 167,000 European Union nationals who currently work in the health and social care sectors to stay in the UK after we leave the EU, and in December 2018 they were able to apply for settled status early as part of the testing phase of the wider scheme.

We continue to monitor and analyse overall staffing levels across the NHS and adult social care, including the impact of the proposed future immigration system.