Healthcare staff should be exempt from cap on visas for skilled workers, Labour says, to tackle NHS shortages

Labour has moved to exploit a cabinet split over foreign doctors being refused visas to work in Britain by urging ministers to remove all health professionals from the cap on skilled workers in order to tackle the NHS’s growing staffing crisis.

The move comes after reports that Theresa May rejected calls by senior ministers to relax the rules on migration, which would enable more overseas doctors to move to the UK to alleviate the NHS’s worsening staff shortages.

Jon Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, is demanding that doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff should start being treated separately from the other types of foreign skilled workers covered by the cap, so that more of them can come to the UK.

In a letter to Sajid Javid, the new home secretary, Ashworth warns that the ban on at least 400 doctors taking up NHS posts since December – because the cap restricts how many people can come to fill roles with a shortage of workers – shows that “the government’s ‘hostile environment’ policy is now directly damaging NHS patient care”.

The medics, including 100 from India due to start work in hospitals in the north-west, have been refused entry even though NHS trusts said they needed them to help staff their wards.

The visa rules clearly aren't working in the best interests of NHS patients Jonathan Ashworth, Labour's shadow health secretary

They were denied visas because there were too few places available under the cap system, which limits skilled migration to a monthly total – of 1,000 to 2,200 – which together cannot exceed 20,700 people a year.

Urging Javid to radically overhaul the system to benefit the NHS, Ashworth said in the letter: “Senior medical practitioners from overseas who have been appointed to fill key roles in hospitals around the UK are being blocked from taking up their jobs, leaving NHS patients without care.

“The visa rules clearly aren’t working in the best interests of NHS patients. I am asking that you put patient safety first by taking NHS workers out of the tier 2 visa system so that hospitals can get the right numbers of staff in place,” he added.

Labour’s call puts fresh pressure on the prime minister over the tough immigration policies she introduced while she was home secretary between 2010 and 2016.

It follows a report in the London Evening Standard – which is edited by the former chancellor, George Osborne – that May overruled lobbying by Jeremy Hunt, the health and social care secretary, and Amber Rudd, the then home secretary, for the visa system to operate more freely, so that more foreign doctors are allowed in.

Hostile environment policy leaving doctors without visas, say NHS officials Read more

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the leader of the British Medical Association, said: “Given that the government has recognised the importance of a long-term solution to address the current workforce crisis in the NHS, the suggestion that the prime minister has blocked requests that would enable overseas doctors to practise in the NHS is deeply concerning.” The visa cap system is “inexplicable and threatening patient care and safety”, he added.

Downing Street did not deny the Standard story. Asked about it, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “It remains essential we have control of the immigration system and it works in the national interest.”

He added: “We are monitoring the situation in relation to visa applications for doctors, including the monthly limits through the tier 2 visa route. Around one-third of all tier 2 visas go to the NHS and investing in our workforce will continue to be a top priority.”

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts in England, said that exempting medical staff from the cap was “one obvious solution” to “severe staff shortages that have been building, in plain sight, for several years”.

He added: “Trusts have now hit the frustrating problem of not being able to get visas for staff they have recruited. This is forcing those trusts to employ more expensive temporary staff and risk losing qualified, experienced staff that the NHS needs.”

The 400 doctors have been refused permission to work in Britain because the cap on arrivals has been met in each of the last five months, after being met only once before, in June 2015.

NHS bosses believe that doctors have been blocked because the cap has been reached as a result of more of the places within the quota going to nurses, to help counteract the growing number of EU-trained nurses leaving the UK. New figures last week showed that the last year has seen an 87% fall in the number of nurses and midwives from the other 27 EU countries joining the Nursing and Midwifery Council register and a 28% year-on-year rise in the number of such personnel who have stopped working in the UK.