Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many nurses have been recruited by the NHS in England from (a) the UK, (b) other EU member states and (c) outside the EU in each of the last five years.

The Department does not hold information on the number of nurses recruited by the National Health Service in England from the United Kingdom and other EU member states and outside the European Union in each of the last five years.

It is the responsibility of each NHS organisation to determine how many nurses it employs and from where these nurses are recruited.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), holds data on the nationality of staff working in the NHS as at 30 September 2013, the latest published data available. September data for the years 2009 to 2014 inclusive will be published, for the first time, by the HSCIC on 23 January.

The information as at September 2013 is set out in the table below:

Notes:

These statistics relate to the contracted positions within English NHS organisations and may include those where the person assigned to the position is temporarily absent, for example on maternity leave.

Data Quality:

It should be noted that well over 100,000 staff do not have a specified nationality in the whole data set which included all staff so the figures above do not show the exact numbers of each nationality, but rather an indication of the numbers with known nationalities.

Source: Health and Social Care Information Centre, Provisional NHS Hospital and Community Health Service (HCHS) monthly workforce statistics.