NHS Providers responds to new migration figures

Responding to the latest net migration figures from the ONS, the chief executive of NHS Providers, Sir Julian Hartley said:

“Our understaffed health and social care system relies on the contribution of highly valued staff from overseas to keep it going.

“But this isn’t sustainable.

“With more than 125,000 vacancies across the NHS in England and around 150,000 in social care, we can’t keep relying on international recruitment to plug these huge gaps.

“We need to turbo-boost the number of domestically trained health and social care staff alongside welcoming colleagues from abroad to join the service.

“The NHS long-term workforce plan aims to increase the number of staff working in the health service in the coming years, but it needs to be backed up by sufficient funding. The migration statistics show just how desperately we need a similar plan for the social care workforce, too.    

“Social care staff must be better paid, better valued and better trained if we want to create a sustainable, diverse, and skilled workforce for the future.”