Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between David Duguid and Alison McGovern

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[David Duguid]

I thank you for your response; I am only sorry that Mr Newlands was not here to hear you refer to his hometown.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Q Professor Kinnair, to begin with, this morning we heard from Migration Watch and I asked them what they thought the consequences might be of restricting immigration to this country in the way that they say they have ambitions to achieve, and what that would do to our labour market and the dependency ratio, which is the ratio between the number of people working and the number of retired people. The response was that, of course, the retirement age would need to rise in line with their proposals.

Professor Kinnair, could you just give us what you think the view would be from the nursing profession if the Government, in response to the policy choices we are making now, were required to raise the retirement age to, say, 70?

Professor Dame Donna Kinnair: I will just put in that 11% of our registered nurse workforce in the UK are non-EEA nationals and 5% are EEA nationals. So that is a combination of about 90,000 to 120,000 nurses.

On the impact of raising the retirement age for nurses, nursing is a very physically demanding job. There is an anticipation—people are already talking about this, but I suspect we will have nurses on zimmer frames pushing patients on zimmer frames if we continue to carry on in this manner. Nursing is a very physically demanding job and you also have to be mentally on the ball to give the drugs and the care; it is quite a high-pressured environment. So it sounds very easy—“Let’s just raise the retirement age”—but people physically need to have the stamina to be able to deliver the care to patients, whether it is in their homes or in hospitals.

My view, and I have written about this, is that raising the retirement age is something we do with great caution for the nursing community. One plank is bringing back people who are retired to fill the gaps we currently have, but that can only suffice for a small percentage, because nurses, too, are subject to the long-term conditions and all the other things that the general population is prone to.