I have long taken the view that ideally as a country, we should be able to produce the doctors and nurses that we need. However in reality, we haven’t been able to so for decades and it has been hardworking doctors and nurses from abroad who have ensured that we haven’t had major shortages in our health service.
The UK has always been a popular place for foreign doctors and nurses to come and work but in recent months, the Tier 2 visa route has seen the number of applications exceed the monthly allocation of available places. This has been driven to a major extent by NHS demand. This is why it is good news that last week, the Home Secretary announced that doctors and nurses are to be excluded from the cap on skilled worker visas.
As well as providing a boost to the NHS, this will also free up many additional places a month within the cap for other highly skilled occupations, such as engineers, IT professionals and teachers. This is all part of a fair and controlled immigration system that reduces immigration to more sustainable levels than the disastrous open borders we saw under the last Labour government.
The National Health Service continues to see ever greater demand placed upon it. At £114 billion a year, spending on the NHS has never been higher but increases in spending each year struggle to keep up with the level of increased demand. The recent announcement by Theresa May of an extra £20 billion by 2023 is very welcome news indeed.
There is going to be some front-loading of this NHS spending increase with 3.6% extra in each of the next two years, with it being 3.1% in each of the following two years. Crucially, these are real-time spending increases above inflation that will make a real impact. Savings from leaving the European Union will provide some of this money but we will also have to find money from taxation. While the government finances are in their best shape for a decade, we can’t risk going off-course by borrowing more.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
20th June 2018