NHS leaders, senior doctors and the General Medical Council (GMC) have raised concerns over the exodus of foreign-trained doctors and nurses from the UK, and warned it could leave huge gaps in the country's healthcare workforce.
They said the increased denigration and abuse directed at migrants in the UK was a significant reason for the rise in foreign medics leaving.
The latest GMC figures show that 4,880 doctors who qualified in another country left the UK during 2024 – a rise of 26 percent from 3,869, who did so in the preceding year.
This is cause for concern because 42 percent of the entire NHS medical workforce is qualified overseas.
Dr Amit Kochhar, chair of the British Medical Association’s representative body, told The Guardian that a sustained campaign against migrants is leaving many foreign-trained doctors wondering whether it is worth staying in the UK.
The national Social Partnership Forum (SPF) had earlier raised the issue of an increase in abuse and harassment of NHS staff from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.
Interestingly, this comes at a time when the number of overseas doctors coming to work in Britain has levelled off.
The GMC report shows that 20,060 joined the UK medical register last year, a marginal increase from 19,629 in 2023. This was the smallest increase since 2020.
GMC’s chief executive Charlie Massey told The Guardian that any hardening of rhetoric could affect the UK’s image "as somewhere the brightest and the best from all over the world want to work.”
Health secretary Wes Streeting had earlier voiced alarm that NHS staff were bearing the brunt of a return to 1970s and 1980s-style racism in Britain, where it is “socially acceptable to be racist”.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) last month highlighted a surge in nurses suffering racist abuse at work.
A survey conducted by the RCN shows that the Labour government's move to curb net migration, both illegal and legal, and the anti-foreigner rhetoric by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party have sparked distress among foreign NHS and social care staff.
There are more than 200,000 internationally educated nursing staff, about 25 percent of the UK’s total workforce of 794,000.
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood on Thursday (20) proposed changes to the routes for settling in the UK (also known as ‘settlement’ , ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ or ILR).
It would allow high earners and entrepreneurs to qualify in three years, some in five years, while the default would be ten years, with some individuals having to wait 20 or even 30 years to settle.
The consultation, which began on Thursday (November 20), is open until February 12.
