From The Telegraph this morning:
Almost half of foreign nurses plan to quit Sir Keir Starmer's Britain because of its “hostile” immigration policy, a report has revealed.
More than 55,000 international NHS nurses want to move away, a survey revealed, raising the prospect of a staffing crisis across the health service and social care.
Some 42 per cent blamed racism and Britain's unwelcoming attitude towards foreigners for wanting to leave the country amid the Prime Minister's planned crackdown on immigration.
Who can blame them? Starmer is creating a hostile environment for migrants. They will notice, as he clearly wants them to. His dog-whistling vilification is done for a reason.
There is just one problem. As The Telegraph also notes:
Nearly a quarter of all nurses working in the NHS are trained overseas and half of all nurses newly joining the UK nursing register in recent years have come from abroad.
So, without them, we have no NHS.
Is Starmer capable of joined-up thinking? His migration policy is about to destroy the NHS, and he appears unaware of that. How can that be?
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I’m not surprised. It’s almost impossible to credit that Starmer is a Labour PM. Worse still, not a single resignation from Labour MPs in response to the “island of strangers” speech, which will be remembered alongside “rivers of blood”.
Wes Streeting has taken about £70k in donations from someone with a stake in a nursing agency company. I’m sure they will welcome the high fees that will arise from a staffing crisis.
Thank you, Tom.
Is that the same agency recently sold by someone special to Streeting to a US firm?
It’s a man called Peter Herne who owns a number of companies that specialise is providing staff to the NHS. Streeting other donor is someone high up in United Health care, the company who’s CEO was recently murdered and who zero Americans could gather up any sympathy for. Together they have given Streeting £177k.
What good is owning a medical staffing agency if there are no medical staff to recruit?
If international medical personnel are the leaving the UK and there is already a shortage of qualified staff of all nationalities, what is the benefit of owning a staffing agency?
I am sorry but I do not see the benefit.
Clearly that should be illegal. But it isnt.
Our politics is corrupt from top to bottom.
All too often, what goes around comes around. Christian or not, these principles might be a better way to inform political discourse and maybe break the cycle:
1.“For I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35)
2. “Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Mark 12:31)
3. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31)
4. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)
Principles which Keir Hardie staunchly advocated throughout his political career: see .
See: https://www.keirhardiesociety.org/keir-hardie-and-christianity.html
So when Wes Streeting asks my local private provider how many NHS joint replacements they can contract for, in 2026 (my wife awaits her 4th NHS Joint replacement, 2 in a private hospital, one in an NHS Hospital, and on a list for the next one in a private hospital), presumably the private provider contract executive will say, “Sorry, SoS, we haven’t the staff, we can only just manage our own private patients at the moment, our foreign nurses have gone home because of your hostile environment.” and then Wes will have to offer us Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness videos for pain relief, or there’s always the assisted dying option (if she can get a permanent residency visa for her preferred eternal destination).
Maybe Wes will send us abroad for our ops? Free movement of patients?
If you want to know why most nurses are trained over seas, it is because very few are trained in the UK. This is because the nursing qualification is a degree course and is very expensive (it used to be a on-the-job training course).
What have you and many of your commenters been saying since Starmer’s speech, Richard. Actions have consequences. Particularly when – as we now know because nobody admitted it was a mistake or took the fall for it – the link between an aspect of Starmer’s speech and that of Enoch Powell is so blindingly obvious. Hostile environment? Absolutely.
And yet having just had a look at the NHS web site I see that if you want to train as a nurse it’s still being treated as if you’re a ‘normal’ university student. OK, you can get £5K from the government, and maybe some more if you fulfill certain other criterion, but fees are over £9K, so whatever you do you’re going to be out of pocket to some extent.
But why, oh why, hasn’t a LABOUR government implemented an updated system of the bursary system that existed before the Tories abolished it in 2017, with the appropriate enhancements to encourage more people to go into nursing, and to remain once trained (e.g. two or three years NHS work as a ‘repayment’ for free training).
And how can it be that with an existing shortfall in the required numbers of nursing staff nobody in government factors in the need to put in place as many attractive measures as they can to try to boost the number of ‘home grown’ people going into nursing – particularly where other policy developments are going to drive out people.
Is this really yet another example of what appears to be absolutely no strategic thinking or planning? Can it really be the case that we have a government so inept that nobody can take a systemic view of the various policies proposals so that action (other policies) can be taken to address the consequences of the various developments across policy domains?
Seriously, having been a mature student, and then tutor teaching public administration in the 1990s I can safely say my colleagues and I would have failed any final years student who couldn’t present us with an holistic view of this type of policy challenge. Indeed, we used case studies that were more complex.
Or is it really the case that everything – taking a system approach, proposing solution to the problems created as a consequence of other actions, and so on, are simply no even considered because Reeves and the Treasury say ‘there’s no money’. Consequently, it’s not even worth trying – just wait for the inevitable collapse, and then ‘problem solve’.
I despair, I really, really, do.
Justifiably so, Ivan.
I should point out that in Scotland tuition is free for nurses and everyone else in university. As a trainee nurse, out daughter also received a bursary for living expenses, though not quite enough as we had to pay for her rent. This goes some way to explaining why the NHS performs better here than England.
Thanks
Ivan Horrocks- “Or is it really the case that everything – taking a system approach, proposing solution to the problems created as a consequence of other actions, and so on, are simply no even considered because Reeves and the Treasury say ‘there’s no money’. Consequently, it’s not even worth trying – just wait for the inevitable collapse, and then ‘problem solve’.”
I think this is an accurate assessment of what underlies the truly appalling failure of public administration by this shambles of a government. Which will destroy it at the next election, as sure as night follows day. The pUblic can sense all this even if they don’t understand it. I wonder how many labour MPs do by now. Excellent comment from you.
If my aim was to destroy the NHS comprehesively, without public uproar, I would do many of the things whci Streeting and Starmer are doing. Cut staffing; make substitutes come through private agencies; contract out siple operations and many support functions; overwork and overstress the determined few medical staff working in the NHS and for its principles. My only bar to believeing this is thinking that Streeting and Starmer are not clever enough to have such a long-term plan.
It’s becoming fairly important to stop thinking of this Government as being a “Labour Government”. It is not. Whatever it calls itself.
The longer people go on thinking it’s a Labour Government, the more disappointed, angry and bitter they will become. Worse, they will go on hoping that it’s all been a bad dream, and that tomorrow Starmer will come up with something that changes the reality back to where it was.
It’s just like discovering one’s spouse has been having an affair. The shock; the feelings of betrayal; the realisation that one has been deceived and consistently lied to. Then the time spent waiting in hope that it will all go back to what it once was. The expectations dashed. Then, eventually, the coming to terms with it and the severing of the relationship.
People need to sever their relationship with the unfaithful Starmer’s Party more speedily than they have been. There’s no point in hoping for a volte face. It won’t happen.
The biggest source of sadness is that Labour was supposed to be “the alternative”. But where will we find the alternative to the alternative?
No, please stay and fight.
I can’t, Andrew. I was a supporter of the Labour Party because, for the vast majority of the time, it represented and stood up for the values I have believed in all my life.
Something rotten has invaded and taken control of the body of that Party, and that something is alien to me. Asking me to vote for a box labelled “Labour” when it contains things called “racism”, “performative cruelty”, “cronyism” and “privatisation” is something I’m afraid I am unable to do.
Andrew, the Labour Party is a lost cause.
Thank you, Richard.
Did you see Sturmer’s childish reaction to the question from Liz Saville-Roberts? Plus Reeves’ reaction.
There will be a blog in the morning when I have the Hansard version.
Just before my daughter qualified as a nurse, she was talking of having a long break to explore New Zealand and other parts of the world. Then Covid struck, travel became impossible, so she was pitched into her first years as a nurse in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow, during a pandemic.
After surviving (though she and all the staff caught the virus at some time) she decided to take advantage of the favourable conditions for employment of nurses in NZ and went to see. Well, wages are better, nurses are offered residence rights immediately, no need to stay for a few years first, and the conditions of work are very much better. My daughter no longer has to cover a ridiculously high number of patients, due to short staffing (even in Scotland, which is better than England in both pay and conditions).
My wife and I miss her, though we managed a visit last Autumn (Spring in NZ) and she will be coming for a holiday to Scotland this Autumn, with her NZ born partner, an electrician. I realise that electricians, like nurses, can work wherever they like, so given that he’s said he wants to explore Europe, there is more chance my daughter will return home, though to work as a nurse in the NHS (even in Scotland) cannot be an attractive prospect.
This is a rather long preamble, but what I would like to point out is that it’s not just international nurses who are planning to leave the NHS. Conditions and pay for nurses in the private sector are far more attractive and with countries like Australia and New Zealand offering such incentives to go there, it’s no surprise that the NHS is understaffed. The more understaffing, the harder the work conditions and the stronger the attraction of the alternatives. Nurse are valuable. They should be paid what they are worth!
I am sure Starmer/Streeting are aware of all this. Privatisation of health in the UK is their aim.
Doctors are heading for Australia in droves.
I assume that the head of the NHS is paid up neoliberal.
If the is a shortage the neoliberal theory requires increasing payment, so why is not the government increasing their wages.
Does the government only quote neoliberal, only when it suits them?
The current one is.
“Privatisation of health in the UK is their aim.”
Maybe. BUT! How will a privatized health system in the UK be run id there are no qualified medical staff?
Donald Trump can deport all the illegal immigrants he wants to but a labor tipping point will be reached and construction will grind down to a slow creeping then a halt. There is simply not enough low-skilled, semi-skilled and high skilled construction workers to serve the needs of the USA construction industry with out the “illegals”.
Projects will not be built and/or erected so jobs will disappear and the remaining construction workers will have no greater bargaining power for wages. Their bargaining power for wages may even diminish if they are not willing to travel (relocate) for the duration of the project that requires their skill and expertise.
The have themselves to blame (Starmer’s administration), I know my conscience is very clear I didn’t vote for labour last year (I voted) greens, in the next election I will either lib dems or greens again. This so called labour party is just Deform lite with a mix of Toryism.
Doesn’t Starmer’s wife work in the NHS, Occupational health?
Supposedly….
This government are a disgrace. My daughter is currently halfway through a nursing course. there is a culture of bullying from middle management and HR. staff members are frightened of doing things wrong and face casual racism and mysoginy by patients and their visitors. Overseas nurses are less likely to object to bullying behaviour so they are sometimes taken advantage of. They wont need much encouragement to go somewhere where they will be better appreciated and more able to build a more comfortable life for themselves.
These guys have no clue
Dire. McSweeney the Mystery Cat strikes again (except T S Eliot had to call him Macavity because it scanned better).
🙂
Can these idiots not, for one second put themselves in the position of an immigrant and ask themselves what they would do when faced with the same situation! ‘Hmmm, added to the fact that I’m not welcome here, 10 years instead of 5 before I can even start to apply for citizenship, I think I’ll just move to Australia where the pay and the weather are better anyway’.
The lack of empathy is staggering.
I’ve chosen the wrong decade to get old and ill in.
I kind of expected to have been abandoned by the Goverment but never expected it to be a Labour one doing the business.
Given the choice I’d prefer to read about the Labour betrayal in the history books in a couple of centuries time rather than living through it now.
🙂
I don’t think this is incompetence, it is a deliberate action by Labour to break the NHS. I am currently reading “The Global Coup d’Ètat: The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Great Reset” by Jacob Nordangård (2024). He writes:
“The World Economic Forum (WEF) was originally founded as the European Management Forum in 1971 and renamed in 1987. As of 2015, it calls itself “the world’s leading organization for public–private partnerships” dedicated to “improving the world.”
Many of the world’s politicians have attended their annual meeting at Davos. Starmer has said he would choose Davos of Westminister (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qI0xQSn8Y0 ). It looks likely that this is the plan.
The fact that nearly a quarter of NHS nurses are from abroad shows just how vital these workers are. If they leave due to an unfriendly environment, we could face a real crisis. I’m curious to see if Starmer and the government will reconsider their approach.
Research from the RCN.
https://leftfootforward.org/2025/05/governments-cruel-immigration-policies-could-cause-exodus-of-migrant-nurses-rcn-warns/
Interesting that the foreign trained nurses are not necessarily returning to the country they came from.
Thanks