We can have Brexit or the NHS. We can't have both, says @campbellclaret. https://t.co/n1bGaWozqu
— The New European (@TheNewEuropean) November 11, 2017
Brexit is destroying the NHS…no more EU staff, disaster!….says melodramatic spin doctor Alistair Campbell….
The NHS was ‘the silver bullet’ the anti-Brexit campaign needed, ‘because it is becoming clearer and clearer that we can have Brexit or the NHS but we can’t have both’. Heed those words. Polling published here last week showing growing concern that Brexit may be damaging the NHS suggests the public sense that is right.
It is not just about money, of course. There is staffing. The day we met, the Nursing and Midwifery Council reported a 67% rise in the number of EU nurses and midwives leaving the register compared with the same period the year before. Dr House said there had been a 96% drop in EU nursing applicants – there is a nursing recruitment crisis in mental health by the way – in the 12 months following the referendum. Recently I spoke for the Time to Change mental health campaign at Kingston Hospital, Surrey, where 13% of the medical staff are from the EU. They’re not all going home, but some are.
So the NHS is to be weaponised, a ‘silver bullet’ that is sent to destroy the evil Brexit monster. The BBC is happily onboard with such fantasies, peddling them for all it’s worth. Trouble is…it’s all fake news.
The proportion of EU nationals leaving jobs in the NHS is rising, while the share of those joining is shrinking.
The BBC analysed NHS Digital figures, which showed the trend in England over the past two-and-a-half years.
Health experts say the UK’s decision to leave the European Union in June 2016 was behind the trend.
So the BBC and the EUseful idiots like Campbell are telling us this…EU staff are fleeing the NHS……due to Brexit….
But is that true in the slightest? No, of course not. They give grim warnings about 10,000 EU staff leaving the NHS but fail to mention the 13,000 that joined…..never mind more Brits and non-EU staff. The NHS has more staff now than in June 2016….
The headcount was 1,187,298 in July 2017. This is 1,699 (0.1 per cent) more than the previous month (1,185,599) and 21,076 (1.8 per cent) more than in July 2016 (1,166,222).
The BBC even admits way down the report that its headline is hugely alarmist and misleading as we have more EU staff and the number of nurses we are short from the EU is relatively minute….
Overall, the NHS says there are around 3,200 more EU nationals working in the NHS than at the time of the referendum, as the size of the health service continues to grow.
Over the same period, there has been a slight reduction of 162 nurses, which it suggests may be down to the Nursing and Midwifery Council introducing new language requirements in January 2016, making it more difficult to be eligible for employment.
So how does that merit the headline…
Share of European Union staff leaving NHS rises following Brexit
The Mail took the BBC’s reporting apart [as did Mark Tinsley here]:
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.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.
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.
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.
[I will post the whole of the Mail’s article in the next post as it is too big to post here and in its web form is hard to read.]
I looked over the figures and the facts and they’re right…the BBC, Guardian and fellow EU cheerleaders are spinning us a big lie…..any shortfall in nurses has little to do with Brexit.
This chart shows the truth…an overall rise in EU staff since June 2016, more doctors, more clinical support staff and only a drop of 0.1% in nurses…..
Here’s what the Institute for Employment Studies says in a government report….non-EU recruits are better qualified, speak better english and tend to stay in the job far longer than EU recruits…and EU recruits have dropped off due to new tests and because, in essence, we have drained the EU of health staff who in any case now have better opportunities in their own countries as their economies improve…and note that in 2015 the NHS planned to recruit more from non-EU countries….before the referendum:
Volumes of recruits in European countries were often significantly lower because some of the European economies, which had supplied nurses to several NHS trusts in recent years, were now doing a little better economically, reducing the supply of potential recruits. Second, there were anecdotal reports from interviewees that the European market had already been exhausted, particularly in places like Italy and Spain, where there has been heavy recruitment from some NHS trusts in recent years, and from places like Portugal, which already has a shortage of nurses. This is in contrast to the Filipino and Indian job markets, which are characterised by an oversupply of skilled nurses who are encouraged to seek posts abroad. As two trusts reported:
In Europe, we might look to get a maximum of 20 [nurses] now, whereas in the Philippines, you could get 80-100.
(NHS Trust, London)The only way you get volume that you need… you get it from universities or you go abroad. The commissions are low and so going abroad is the only option.
Reported advantages of recruiting non-EEA nurses over EEA nurses
Trusts also reported other advantages of recruiting non-EEA nurses over EEA nurses. In line with this, the 2015 NHS Employers survey indicates that 56 per cent (83 trusts) have plans to actively recruit from non-EEA countries in the next 12 months.Trusts and expert interviewees reported that non-EEA nurses from India and the Philippines (the two largest suppliers of non-EEA nurses to the UK) were also often more experienced and had better English language skills than some EEA nurses because these foreign workforces tended to be characterised by highly skilled nurses with good levels of spoken and written English. English language skills were thought to be increasingly important among the trusts and experts we spoke to because of the Nursing and Midwifery Council requirement, as of January 2016, for nurses from the European Union to pass an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam before they start working in the UK. All trusts anticipated that this would significantly reduce the numbers of potential recruits from the EEA, if not diminish them altogether. One trust went as far as to suggest the new IELTS exam would almost remove Europe as a viable alternative for them to recruit any new nurses, saying:
I don’t think anyone will go to Europe anymore after these [exams] are introduced because it will yield even fewer potential recruits. This will mean that the time and expense of European recruitment will be the same or even greater than foreign recruitment.
(NHS trust, London)Trusts also reported generally better retention among non-EEA recruits, than among EEA recruits.
European nurses are easier to get in [to the UK], but harder to keep, whereas foreign nurses are harder to get in, but easier to keep.







