Allow Migrant NHS Staff To Remain In The UK, Say MPs

Ministers are being urged to grant migrant NHS workers the indefinite right to remain as the health service braces for what could be one of the most difficult winters it has ever faced. Cross-party MPs, along with medical bodies including the British Medical Association (BMA), have backed calls to change the law so that foreign health and social care staff are given the right to stay in the UK in honour of their commitment during the pandemic.

- May Bulman

Liberal Democrat Christine Jardine, who is pushing the second reading of a private members’ bill that would make this happen, warned that failing to provide “certainty” to these healthcare workers would risk “fuelling the winter crisis with an exodus of staff”. In England, there are 39,000 vacancies for registered nurses, while across Scotland over 4,800 nursing and midwifery posts are empty, according to the latest NHS statistics.

Around 170,000 NHS staff are of non-British nationality. The extent to which the NHS relies on migrants was first underlined by the fact that the first four doctors who died in the UK from coronavirus were born overseas. Many of these migrants are required to pay thousands of pounds in immigration fees in order to remain indefinitely in the UK.