𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Health chiefs must start training more British doctors and nurses and end their reliance on foreign medics, Kemi Badenoch has declared. The leader of the Conservatives said it is “very strange” that the UK “cannot staff” a national institution like the NHS with “homegrown people”.

And she hinted the Tories could scrap the requirement for nurses to have a degree, comparing it to the requirement for police constables to have attended university or study a course while on the job. Union barons told Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood that a crackdown on migrant settlement rights would lead to an exodus of staff, hitting patient care.

But Mrs Badenoch told LBC: “It’s not normal. I think it’s very strange.

“How can it be that we have an NHS that this country is supposedly proud of, and yet we cannot staff it with homegrown people?

“Of course, we will need people from other countries from time to time, but if you’re telling me that the NHS will collapse without immigration, it means it’s not structured properly.

“What we want to see is an economy where people earn high wages and we have low immigration. Immigration that we need, not just that we can’t survive in our economy unless we have immigration. You can’t sustain an economy like that.”

And Mrs Badenoch suggested nurses should be paid more, to encourage more British people into the profession.

She said: “If the NHS can’t survive without immigration, then the model needs to change.

“I want us to start focusing on getting more homegrown nurses, paying them better. In an ideal world, nurses wouldn’t have to go to university, racking up all this debt and so on.

“We’re looking at what we can do around that. We have some ideas on student loans, for example, especially on plan two. But we need to start thinking about what the future looks like.”

Foreign nationals from 216 countries work in the NHS, according to research compiled by the House of Commons Library.

Around 30% of nurses are not British, according to the study. NHS figures show 247,850 of the 370,957 full-time and health visitors are British.

Some 42,169 Indians, 25,000 Filipinos and 12,646 Nigerians hold these roles.

For doctors, this increases to around 36%. Some 98,130 doctors are British, compared to 57,980 from abroad.

Some 12,680 doctors are from India, 6,315 from Pakistan and 4,397 from Egypt.

The number of African and Asian foreign nationals in the NHS has doubled since 2010.

Nursing and Midwifery Council statistics show around 21,000 UK-trained students started training courses last year.

But the Nuffield Trust warned of “significant retention issues”.

The organisation added in a research paper: “We estimated that fewer than three in five doctors (56%) in ‘core training’ remained (even in a different role) in NHS hospital and community services in England eight years later, with 24% of this attrition seen in the first two years.”

Health groups warned Labour’s crackdown could lead to an exodus of tens of thousands of foreign doctors and nurses.

And they told the Home Secretary this could have a dramatic impact on patient care.

The Royal College of GPs told an inquiry by the Home Affairs Select Committee: ““It is integral to acknowledge that the NHS workforce is currently heavily dependent on overseas recruitment to fill workforce gaps, without which the service would struggle to operate.”

The Royal College of Nursing even suggested foreign nurses should be given a faster route to settlement.

But Mrs Badenoch said she is focusing on removing barriers to nursing for domestic workers.

She pointed to the requirement for them to have a degree, adding: “We are actively looking at it.

“We had a similar issue in the police. That’s changed.

“I do wonder why we are putting so much debt on young people, and then they can’t get jobs afterwards; when they get the jobs, they’re not earning very much.

“And this is one of the things that Conservatives are very worried about.

“We’re worried about a lost generation of people, and then you have new issues: jobs are disappearing, unemployment is increasing, AI is turning up, taking jobs, and we need to start thinking about what our economy is going to look like.”