Brexit: Nursing Staff

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to talk about the fact that we have increased the number of nurses and health visitors by nearly 5,000 since 2010. She is quite right to say that we need more of them; we have a growing and ageing population and higher expectations of what the NHS should be delivering. It is for that reason that we have a number of things in action: we have 52,000 nurses in training; we have a return to practice programme, which has already prepared 2,000 nurses to come back into the profession; and we are introducing nursing apprenticeships and nursing associates. We are not complacent about this issue—we know it is important—but there are a number of programmes in train to fill the gap that she has identified.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock]

My Lords, perhaps the Minister could consider that one of the reasons that people are not coming from the European Union is that they feel unwelcome; housing is almost impossible to get, particularly in some of the metropolitan areas; the reduction in the value of the pound against European currencies means that salaries have stagnated even more for some of these people; and, actually, morale is so poor in parts of the health service and social services that people would rather remain and work in their own countries.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I reiterate the point that the Prime Minister made yesterday about the welcome, and indeed the offer of settled status, not just to nurses but to any other EU citizens and workers in the country. It is absolutely not the case that they are unwelcome—quite the opposite. They are as valued as much as any other person working in the health service. The noble Baroness mentioned housing, and she is right, of course, that housing is a huge issue for everybody. Indeed, one thing that I want to look at in the next few years is how we can take surplus land that sits within the NHS and make sure that some of it is used to provide the kind of key-worker housing that nurses, doctors and, indeed, other members of the public sector can use, so that they are able to come into the service and support our hospitals.