The Royal College of Nursing’s leaders have written to the government to condemn its decision to increase visa fees for health and care workers.
In a letter to home secretary Suella Braverman, Pat Cullen, RCN general secretary and chief executive, raised serious concerns about the impact of rising fees on “the ability of the UK to attract and retain desperately needed nursing staff”.
The government earlier this year announced it was increasing UK immigration fees in relation to work and visit visas by 15%. Overseas nursing students face a 35% increase in visa fees. The cost of student visas will also be increased by 20% as will the cost of assigning certificates of sponsorship, settlement and citizenship.
The standard Immigration Health Surcharge fee will increase from £624 to £1,035 per year of the visa and the lower fee, payable by students and those under the age of 18, would increase from £470 to £776 per year of the visa. These increases would also apply to dependants.
The letter stated: “Following more than a decade of real-terms pay cuts for nursing staff, these costs may be unaffordable for many health care workers.”
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Pat Cullen warns the government: “We are concerned that these fee increases will make the UK a less attractive place to live and work for the nurses and other health professionals who make vital contributions to our health and care sector every day.”
Health services, the RCN acknowledged, needed to reduce their reliance on overseas workers in the long-term, with more than half (53%) of registered nurses joining the Nursing and Midwifery Council register in the past year having been educated internationally.
The letter continues: “At a time when there are tens of thousands of nursing vacancies in the NHS and with even more gaps in social care, cutting the supply of internationally educated nursing staff will only add to the pressure on health and care services.
“Nursing staff and care workers, regardless of their country of origin, make a vital contribution to this country in both the care they provide and the taxes and National Insurance contributions they already pay.”
At her speech to the Conservative Party conference this week, Braverman spoke about the dangers of continued high rates of immigration: “The future could bring millions more migrants to these shores … uncontrolled and unmanageable. I can’t pretend that politicians have done a great job of managing immigration for the last 30 years.
“We were too slow to recognise the scale of the problem. Too unwilling to accept that our legal framework needed to be updated. For years, too many overseas students were bringing their dependents here to the UK. So we’ve changed the rules to ensure that a student visa is not a route for whole families to come and live and work in the UK.”
She added: “We will also ensure that legal migration comes down to reasonable levels… and that it occurs only when there is a clear benefit to the British people.”
Personnel Today has contacted the Home Office for a response.
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