Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to attract people with medical skills from overseas to settle in the UK.

We hugely value our health and social care workers from overseas, who work tirelessly to provide the best possible care and enhance our health and care workforce with their valuable skills, experience, and expertise.

The Health and Care Worker visa offers a reduced visa fee, faster processing times, and an exemption from the Immigration Health Surcharge to eligible overseas health and social care workers who wish to work in the United Kingdom.

National Health Service employers work at a local level to ensure they have the workforce they need, which includes making decisions about recruiting internationally educated healthcare professionals.

However, the Government also remains committed to growing homegrown talent and giving opportunities to more people across the country to join our NHS. Following publication of our 10-Year Health Plan, we will produce a refreshed workforce plan, setting out how we will train and provide the staff that the NHS needs to care for patients across our communities and treat them on time again.

The Immigration White Paper sets out reforms to legal migration, so that we can restore order, control, and fairness to the system, bring down net migration, and promote economic growth. The changes set out include a complete overhaul of the relationship between the immigration system, training, and the labour market, to support sustainable growth as well as a sustainable immigration system.