Thousands of foreign nurses working in junior posts in the UK could be forced to return home under new immigration rules, union leaders have warned.
A new pay threshold for migrants means non-European workers will have to leave the UK after six years if they are not earning at least £35,000.
The Royal College of Nursing said the rules would “cause chaos” for the NHS and waste money spent on recruitment.
The Home Office said the rules would help reduce demand for migrant labour.
The move is part of the government’s effort to control net migration, but the union says that by 2017 more than 3,300 NHS nurses could be affected.
And by the end of the decade the numbers could be double that – a potential waste of nearly £40m when all the costs of recruitment are taken into account, the RCN says.
There are more than 400,000 nurses working in the NHS in England.
The warning comes as the RCN’s annual conference gets under way in Bournemouth.
More difficult
RCN general secretary Peter Carter said: “The immigration rules will cause chaos for the NHS and other care services.
“At a time when demand is increasing, the UK is perversely making it harder to employ staff from overseas.”
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the move was “totally illogical” as there is currently a “major shortage of nurses”, leading to many NHS trusts spending “tens of millions” to recruit from overseas.
Dr Carter also stressed that most nurses earn “nowhere near” £35,000, with most on salaries of between £21,000 and £28,000 a year.
Due to cuts to nurse-training places, trusts are being forced into relying on overseas recruitment as well as temporary staff just to provide safe staffing.
The long-term solution is to train more nurses in the UK, but in the interim, foreign nurses filled the gap, he added.
| Nurse pay and roles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Band | Pay range | Typical role |
| 5 | £21,692 – £28,180 | Entry level nurse or midwife |
| 6 | £26,041 – £34,876 | Staff nurse, such as theatre nurse |
| 7 | £31,072 – £40,694 | Senior nurse, such as ward sister / team leader |
| 8 | £39,632 – £81,618 | Nurse consultant or matron |
Source: Royal College of Nursing and NHS England
He said of the new rules: “It can’t be morally or ethically right but will also have a huge impact on the ability of the health service to carry on in the way it has.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “As the prime minister has made clear, the government wants to reduce the demand for migrant labour.
“We changed the settlement rules in 2011 to break the link between coming to work in the UK and staying here permanently.”
He said employers had had four years to prepare for the changes, adding: “There are exemptions to this threshold where the UK has a shortage.”
At the moment nurses are not on that exemption list, but the spokesman said it was possible they could still be added if evidence showed this was needed.
Labour’s Shadow Health Minister Andrew Gwynne said cuts to nurse training had left NHS hospitals with “no option but to recruit from overseas or hire expensive agency nurses.”
Source:https://www.bbc.com
