The head of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has appealed to the Home Secretary to shield migrant care staff from proposed reforms that would make it harder for them to settle in the UK.
Professor Nicola Ranger, General Secretary and Chief Executive of the RCN, said the changes are illogical and unfair. Currently, migrant nursing staff in the UK can apply for permanent residency after five years of work. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, wants to change this for those delivering care outside the NHS, including those already here, and make them wait 10 or even 15 years.
Plans described as a disaster for national care service ambitions
Ranger said the current plans would be a disaster for the Prime Minister's ambitions for a national care service. She noted that the Government has said nurses in the NHS will be exempt, and argued the same must now happen for all migrant nursing staff, including those in social care.
She pointed out that the Prime Minister has described reforming social care as one of the great moral challenges of our time and spoken about the contribution of migrant staff. However, she said his vision for a national care service can only succeed with a thriving nursing workforce.
Social care workforce in crisis
Ranger said the contribution of migrant nursing staff in social care cannot be overstated, as staff from overseas make up a third of all staff in social care. She added that workforce shortages have made accessing care deeply unequal for older people and those with long term conditions, and that the crisis is putting the NHS under enormous pressure, with thousands of patients stuck in hospitals because there is nowhere in social care to discharge them to.
She said the reforms would push thousands of staff already in the UK out of the country and are catastrophic for the Prime Minister's social care plans. She acknowledged the need for a plan to grow the domestic nursing workforce but said it is illogical to attack the rights of those already here.
Double standard over NHS exemption
Ranger recalled that in 2020, as Chief Nurse at King's College Hospital, she worked alongside hundreds of migrant nursing staff who contributed to the Covid-19 response. She said it is deeply upsetting that a Labour government is set to betray those same staff, and that the reforms are clearly unfair.
She said the Home Secretary is right that nurses in the NHS should be exempt, but called it a clear double standard not to protect nursing staff in social care and the independent sector as well. She noted that in Parliament on Monday, the Home Secretary said the immigration system must be based on the principles of fairness, and argued that nothing is fair about telling migrants working in social care they will have to wait five years for residency only to increase it to 10 or even 15 years after they have already been working in the UK for years.
She also raised concerns that the Home Secretary may put more restrictions on migrant nursing staff claiming benefits they are entitled to, which could leave them more likely to go hungry or fail to pay bills if they face hard times.
Last month, in an exclusive with the Daily Mirror, the RCN published findings showing that the UK already has the most hostile immigration system for migrant nursing staff among similar nations, worse than Ireland, Germany, and Donald Trump's USA. Ranger said the Home Secretary should be looking to turn this around, and that migrant nursing staff in all parts of the health and care system need to be exempt from these reforms, or the reforms need to be abandoned.
