NHS: Exodus of EU Staff Getting Worse

The number of EU nationals leaving the NHS because of Brexit is rising sharply at a time when experts say the health care system already faces a “precarious future.”

Just as alarming are figures showing that a dwindling number of European workers are arriving to replace them.

The worrying data on the NHS’s growing staff shortages and vacancy rates was collected by NHS Digital over the past two-and-a-half years and analysed by the BBC.

The confirmation that the EU staff crisis is accelerating came just days after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) warned that the health care system was already “straining at the seams.”

Danny Mortimer, co-convenor of the Cavendish Coalition, which represents health and social care organisations, said the analysis started to confirm the “anecdotal stories we are hearing, especially in the South East that our members don’t feel able to recruit in big numbers.”

He said there was no mystery about the cause of the problem because there were obvious difficulties confronting any EU nationals who were considering coming to Britain to join the NHS. There are “practical challenges like the exchange rate between the pound and euro is weak,” Mortimer said. “ And the number of people choosing to leave is increasing.”

Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said the poor progress in Brexit negotiations was a huge problem. ”A nurse who trained in Lyon or Lisbon is as much a part of the NHS family as one trained in London,” she said. “But sadly it is no surprise that so many are leaving – few can live with the uncertainty.”

As the Brexit negotiations drag on, Prime Minister Theresa May must constantly reassure nurses from around Europe that they are needed and welcomed in the NHS, Davies said. “It would not survive without their contribution.”

Staying Away

The shocking numbers of European nationals leaving or failing to apply to work in Britain has been catalogued over the past six months by Felix Magazine in various professions, ranging from fruit pickers to truck drivers and nuclear scientists but the exodus of doctors and nursing staff is a particular danger.

The BBC analysis of the figures shows that in 2015, the last full year before the June 2016 referendum, there were 7,535 EU nationals who left NHS trusts, making up 5.6% of all workers who left the NHS.

In the following year EU nationals accounted for 6.6% of all leavers and in the first six months of this year, that number rose to 7.4%. The pattern was repeated in 80 NHS trusts surveyed by the BBC out of 240 across Britain. The proportion of EU staff joining fell over the same periods: in 2015 EU nationals accounted for 10% of recruitments to the NHS; in the first six months of 2017, that fell to 8.2%.

A stark picture is provided by the fact that in July 2016 some 1,304 EU nurses came to work in the UK but that figure fell to just 46 in April this year, according to statistics from the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Withholding Evidence

The Health Foundation think tank said figures obtained by a Freedom of Information request showed there was a shortage of 30,000 nurses in England alone, leaving the NHS unable to cope with such a drop-off in EU hiring.

A spokesman for the Health Foundation told Felix the figures were ominous. “They have dropped,” he said.

“It’s down to a combination of Brexit, the falling value of the pound and also the language tests that were put in place a year or so ago as well.”

The Government concedes that its new language requirements have played a part in the falling numbers. The House of Commons select committee on health had started to take evidence on the implications of Brexit but postponed its inquiry when the snap General Election was called in June.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had told the committee the Government had decided not to release to the public its own analysis of the impact of Brexit on the NHS staffing figures “because the publication of what might be called the ‘worst-case scenario’ could have an impact on negotiations.”

 

by Bob Graham

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