Migration Watch UK responds to NHS Workforce Plan

June 30, 2023

Reacting to the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, Migration Watch UK Chairman Alp Mehmet said:

The NHS has over many years relied on foreign labour, including doctors and nurses to plug gaps resulting, primarily, from a failure to train and up-skill our own workforce. Recruiting from poorer countries, where there is often an even greater need, is immoral.

It really is time we trained many more young British people, paid them more and improved working conditions in order to reverse the added problem people leaving because they have had enough.

Notes to editors

In 2022:

• 46 per cent of new HCHS^[1] doctors to join NHS England came from overseas. Furthermore, 63 per cent of all new doctors to join the British Medical Register in 2022 were trained outside of the United Kingdom.
• The number of overseas doctors joining NHS England outnumbered the number of British medical students to enrol in medicine courses.
• Healthcare visas represented almost 90 per cent of long-term sponsored work visas issued in 2022. You can read more about this subject in a research paper released by Migration Watch UK in April 2023.

Expanding medical training for British students was a goal of Migration Watch UK’s Cut Immigration campaign, which has gained over 40,000 signatures. Find out more here.

Furthermore, Migration Watch UK has previously published research into the shortfall of British medical and nursing students.