NHS: Staff

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I agree. Indeed, my Secretary of State has made workforce one of his top priorities. We are responsible for health and social care, and the Green Paper we will publish this autumn will contain more detail on the social care workforce plan.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, 63,000 NHS staff in England are EU nationals; that is 5.6% of all staff. London in particular relies on staff from EU countries, with one-third of all EU NHS staff working in London. We seem to be facing a Brexit emergency here. How will the Government manage both the transition and the long-term recruitment and staffing of the NHS under these circumstances?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

EU nationals and staff from across the world play a vital role in delivering our NHS and social care and we absolutely want them to stay. I can tell the noble Baroness that there are 4,300 more EU 27 nationals in the NHS now than in June 2016. I hope that is a reflection of the fact that they know they are wanted and welcome. We are making sure that the settlement scheme is open to them. Health and care staff will be the first cohort of staff to use the scheme, so that we can give them the opportunity to remain where they are very much wanted.