MAKING OF A BREXIT LIE
It’s an alarming refrain constantly repeated by Remainers, the BBC and the Guardian: that the Brexit vote has caused a staffing crisis in an NHS heavily reliant on EU workers. One problem – the story’s utter hokum, as this forensic investigation proves
Daily Mail 11 Nov 2017 by Ross Clark
WHO could not be worried by the news that the number of EU doctors and nurses working in Britain has plummeted over the past year?
Of all the developments attributed to Brexit, few have more power to scare the public than the idea that the NHS is crumbling for want of medical staff who have been put off coming to work in Britain because they no longer feel welcome here.
For the fact is that our National Health Service is very dependent on foreignborn staff. According to figures from the House of Commons Library, around 62,000 people from the rest of the EU work in the NHS in England alone. No wonder the fear of them leaving as a direct effect of Brexit is so potent.
Radio Four’s flagship news programme, Today, nine days ago led with the news that there has been a ‘drop of nearly 90 per cent’ in EU nurses registering to work in Britain over the past year.
Listeners were left in no doubt as to the reason: Brexit.
‘I think there is absolute lack of clarity for those colleagues of ours who are giving so much to our NHS, working in our nursing homes, working with our families, that they are welcome, that they are going to be allowed to stay,’ Janet Davies, of the Royal College of Nursing, told the programme.
The story was followed up by the Victoria Derbyshire show on BBC2, which claimed that the latest figures ‘add to previous evidence pointing to a significant reduction in the number of EU nurses wanting to work in the UK’. Derbyshire interviewed Stephanie Aiken, also from the Royal College of Nursing, who made the further claim that ‘we’ve lost more than 9,000 EU nurses this year’.
BEFORE
the programme, a producer sent out an appeal on Twitter for a nurse who was thinking of leaving the country to contribute to the broadcast.
In the event, a male Polish nurse who had been working in Britain for 17 years made it on to the airwaves. Though he was worried what would happen to his employment status, he said that he wanted to stay here.
The ‘nurses quit the NHS because of Brexit’ story has been given much play all year.
‘EU nurses no longer want to work in Britain. Brexit is poisoning the EU,’ ran the headline on an article by Suzanne Moore in the Guardian in March. The claim was based on a report from the Nursing and Midwifery Council on a decline in the number of EU nurses registering to work here, a similar set of statistics to the more recent figures that the Today programme used as the basis for its report last week.
In September, the Guardian returned to the theme with a news story which declared ‘Almost 10,000 EU health workers have quit NHS since Brexit vote’ — based on statistics from NHS digital, the agency that collects health service data.
The report added: ‘The British Medical Association said the findings mirrored its own research, which found that four in ten EU doctors were considering leaving, with a further 25 per cent unsure about what to do since the referendum.’
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable latched on to this scare story, telling viewers on BBC1’s Question Time: ‘Ten thousand people have already walked away from the National Health Service because they don’t think they’re needed or wanted any more. That’s the frightening thing.’
Labour’s health spokesman, Jonathan Ashworth, has also claimed that Brexit has slashed NHS recruitment, saying in June: ‘Our health service has always relied on the contribution of overseas workers, yet these staff are being forced out by this Government’s neglect and disregard.’
Yet it simply isn’t true that Brexit has caused a staffing crisis in the health service. This is all a big lie which the
Remain lobby keeps repeating as part of its propaganda campaign against Brexit.
Contrary to what these doomladen reports imply, the NHS’s statistics show that the overall number of EU citizens working in the health service has actually grown since the Brexit vote.
The Guardian and Cable were technically correct in saying that 10,000 EU citizens have left the NHS since the Brexit vote.
The health service’s figures show that, between June 2016 and June 2017, a total of 9,832 EU citizens left jobs with NHS trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups in England ( because health is a devolved issue, statistics are collected separately for the rest of the UK).
But this completely ignores the other side of the equation and therefore is deeply misleading.
While they were happy to quote the number of EU staff leaving, they failed to mention the number of EU staff who joined the NHS.
Perhaps that’s because, during the same period, health service statistics show that 13,013 EU citizens took up jobs in the NHS.
Far from the exodus the pro-Remain establishment wants us to believe has taken place, this represented a net rise of 3,181 in the number of EU citizens working in our health service.
FURTHERMORE, official figures show that in most areas of the NHS, since the Brexit vote, more staff from across the Channel are working in our health service.
The number of EU citizens working as NHS doctors rose from 9,695 to 10,136 — a net gain of 441. The number of consultants increased from 3,747 to 4,080 — a net rise of 333. The number of EU midwives grew from 1,220 to 1,247 — an extra 27. Ambulance staff numbers rose by 136, from 250 to 386. Scientific, therapeutic and technical staff increased by 841, from 6,112 to 6,953.
What’s more, Theresa may has done everything she can to reas- sure EU citizens that they will be able to stay in Britain after Brexit.
For example, just last month she wrote an open letter reassuring them that securing their continued residency rights ‘remains a priority’.
The idea that EU doctors and nurses are so worried about Brexit that they are fleeing elsewhere is utter nonsense, and it is shamefully wrong for the Remain lobby to keep scaring people by trying to convince them that it is true.
It is true that there was a modest drop in the number of EU citizens working as nurses in the NHS — down from 20,907 to 20,618, a net fall of 289.
However, with more than 20,000 EU nurses employed in the NHS, this amounts to a fall of less than 2 per cent.
The ‘90 per cent’ drop reported by the BBC’s Today programme came from a set of statistics from the Nursing and midwifery Council, which is responsible for registering nurses and midwives as fit to work in Britain.
The figures do not relate to the number of people actually taking up employment. They refer, instead, merely to the number of foreign nurses completing the process of registering to work in the UK.
Between September 2015 and 2016, 10,178 nurses and midwives from other European Economic Area countries (which means the EU along with Norway and Iceland) registered to work in Britain. over the following year, to September 2017, the number fell to 1,107 — as reported, a fall of nearly 90 per cent.
But that didn’t mean the BBC was being straight with listeners. Blaming the decline in registered nurses on Britain voting to leave the EU is a misrepresentation of the facts which ignores a very important factor that has nothing to do with Brexit.
From January 2016, overseas nurses wanting to register to practise here have had to take the International English Language Test System (IELTS), and to achieve level 7 — the proficiency of a ‘good’ English user — in each of four elements: reading, writing, speaking and listening.
It is of course right to ensure that nurses speak good English if they are to work in British hospitals — the consequences of even basic misunderstandings can be deadly.
Yet in the tough written tests in particular, nurses were expected to reach the same standards as graduates applying to take higher degrees at our leading universities and were asked to write academic essays on topics that had nothing to do with nursing or even healthcare.
In one case, the assignment centred on the changing number of Japanese tourists visiting parts of Britain.
These tests, which require a level of knowledge far beyond that which nurses require to do their jobs safely, set an impossibly high bar.
Eighty per cent of applicants put forward for the test by one recruitment firm failed to reach the required standard. Even native English speakers from countries such as Australia failed.
If these English speakers couldn’t pass, is it any wonder nurses from Spain or Estonia struggled?
ON NOVEMBER 1, the day before the scaremongering report on the Today programme linked nurse shortages to Brexit, the Nursing and midwifery Council relaxed the language tests in order to bring them more in line with the vocational versions used in places such as Australia and Canada. Yet not a word of this made it into the Today report, which blamed nursing shortages on Brexit alone.
The reality is that EU nurses are still keen to come and work here.
According to HCL Workforce Solutions, which recruits foreign nurses for the NHS, the number of applications it received from nurses in other EU countries has actually gone up since the Brexit vote, from 1,629 in the 12 months to June 2016 to 1,886 in the year to June 2017.
The main reason dedicated foreign nurses are not able to take jobs in the NHS is the rigorous language test, which the vast majority of them failed.
All of this hard data comprehensively disproves the claims made by the BBC, the Guardian, the Lib Dems, Labour and others that Brexit — which, of course, hasn’t even happened yet — is causing an NHS staffing crisis.
How many times have we heard the Remain lobby whining that the British electorate were duped into voting for Brexit by the ‘lies’ of the Leave campaign? Yet at the same time it keeps repeating a blatant lie about the NHS haemorrhaging staff due to nurses and other personnel supposedly being frightened away.
This is a disgraceful attempt to scare the public in the forlorn hope of overthrowing the result of the EU referendum. We had Project Fear before the vote — now we are witnessing Project Fear II.
If all these EU countries can train up so many nurses and doctors that they have a massive surplus, then why can’t we train enough for our needs?
First things first. This article is a perfect example of how the most powerful MSM force in Britain is using its muscle to misinform, influence and form the opinions of the electorate. The BBC is a threat to democracy.
With regard to NHS recruitment, it should be remembered that over the past seven years of so, the NHS headcount has gone from around a million to 1.3 million. That’s really going some. How dare the nasty Tories invest such money in the service and put so much pressure of recruiters! BUT it should also be remembered that ‘Project 2000’ wrecked nurse training and care in this country. Project 2000 was the idea that in future nurses should, rather than be trained and progress on the job, be degree qualified and able to pass the rigour of entrance and qualification exams to be able to do their jobs. This meant that thousands of better qualified people, non academic, but caring and empathetic individuals were denied entrance to the career that they were eminently and emotionally suited for. Recruitment has been constrained and the patient experience has suffered as caring has given way to people, some who see themselves as too qualified to care.
Superb analysis Alan, I now understand fully the situation. I do have one question, however; why hasn’t the BBC with all its resources managed to gather this information together to challenge the figures given by those with vested interests? The Beeb has a duty to be impartial (except, it seems, for Climate Change, politics, economics, EU, immigration, education, sharia, religion, gender issues, sexuality and the like; but certainly for other than them) so what possible reason could there be for not countering the claims. Surely not bias!
And of course the regular elephant in the room Is – the increasing population due to inward migration.
More people = Higher numbers of medical staff required . Crikey I worked this one out myself and I dont even have a degree in economics specialising in demand and supply – Does this mean I am clever?
No BBC lets just ignore this one and blame – ITS THE CUTS INNIT!
“Consider this, I give this example. If immigration continues at the levels it has average over the last ten years. Britain will be adding 10 million people to it’s population in the next 20 years. That means building a new house roughly every seven minutes. Now, we currently have no leadership from the Liberal Democrats, Conservative or Labour Parties saying they are going to do anything to change that course. @5:56 … if any party wishing to get into power doesn’t address this they are committing political suicide….@10:30″ {youtube – Douglas Murray – oct2015}
… but wait, someone, who is now in power (2017) to act out their words, did mention this problem and almost suggests that ‘too high immigration’ should be reduced (2015) …
“Because when immigration is too high (no figure given), when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society. It’s difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope. And we know that for people in low-paid jobs, wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out of work altogether. … So there is no case, in the national interest, for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last decade.”
Theresa May as Home Secretary // Speech to the Conservative Party Conference – in full / 06.10.2015
In the past fifty years or so the number of the indigenous British population has barely increased. All the increase in the level of population has come about by immigration with much of that happening in the last twenty years. In other words Britain has a fairly stable level of indigenous peoples and as such is well able to be self sustaining.
The only reason for the overpopulation and overcrowding, especially in certain parts of the nation, is because of the numbers of outsiders who the various governments of all parties have not only allowed to enter but have engaged in actively encouraging to come here.
All countries, to one extent of another, allow a degree of immigration to occur for various reasons but sensible ones ensure they keep a strict control over the extent to which that happens. Whilst doing that they also try to ensure that those they accept as immigrants are people who will fit into their general population along with the ethics and morals the nation has developed over it’s history.
Britain’s leadership, on the other hand, have demonstrably failed to act in such a manner and have gone out of their way to avoid placing controls on immigration, despite their feeble attempts to fool us otherwise, and have gone out of their way to cover up and hide both the extent and problems their actions and deceptions have created especially in certain parts of Britain and those activities the bBBC has been more than complicit in assisting our leadership to indulge in.
Anyone listening to R4 – they are being nice to the non-white (their words) EX – sacked editor of the gay times..He is getting an easy ride compared to Boris Johnson or any Brexiteer…Sorry it is BBC at it’s best – they can’t possibly treat a leading LGBT person like anyone else – All sympathetic voices and no hard questions..lots of leading ones to paint him as a poor misguided person….
Look at the attack on Green because he might have had a bit of porn on his computer (alleged)