Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of whether new immigration rules will exacerbate the shortage of nurses in the United Kingdom and cost the NHS tens of millions in recruitment.

The Home Office published a full impact assessment on the changes to Tier 2 settlement rules when they were laid before Parliament on 15 March 2012. The impact assessment is available on the gov.uk website at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/117957/impact-assessment-tier2.pdf.

The Department of Health take the issue of nursing recruitment seriously and have prioritised and invested in front-line staff, so there are over 8,600 more nurses on NHS wards than there were in 2010. Health Education England’s workforce plan for England for 2015-16 forecasts that, following further increases in the number of training commissions, the proposed levels for nurse training will deliver over 23,000 more nurses by 2019.