NHS: Nurse Recruitment

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Liberal Democrats and the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Cheltenham, wishes to speak virtually. This is a convenient point to call him.

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Government signed up to the 2010 World Health Organization code of practice committing to a self-sustaining supply of doctors and nurses in the UK. Yet Patrick Cockburn and Professor Rachel Jenkins point out that the UK still trains proportionally fewer medical staff than other OECD countries. When does the Minister expect us to reach the WHO target, rather than recruiting medical staff trained by countries in much worse situations than ourselves?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

We do not think we should just have a protectionist view on staff. It is important that we recruit British staff from the UK, but we should not have a policy of British jobs for British workers. There are very good staff across the world. Indeed, in some countries they train more staff than they have places for in their health system so that they become a foreign revenue earner. Many people who have looked at the statistics say that remittances quite often are more effective than foreign aid.