We are repeatedly told by migration advocates that the NHS needs immigration to survive. Migration Watch has refuted these arguments time and time again. The debate is circular. Successive governments have adopted a strategy of recruiting abroad instead of addressing domestic workforce problems, then invoking the resulting dependence as justification for even more migration. But, in the light of a new article by consultant oncologist, the utterly excellent former Professor J Meirion Thomas, it is worth running over the arguments.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has acknowledged that high skilled migration partly reflects failures to improve training, pay, conditions and retention. Salaries are perhaps the biggest issue. In 2023, the MAC estimated that newly arriving migrant nurses earned 18% less than domestic nurses, after controlling for age, gender and region. This is because the NHS starts migrant nurses at the bottom of pay scales irrespective of experience. No wonder a dependence has formed, when employers (i.e the NHS) can use migrant labour to undercut British-trained staff so heavily! Overseas recruitment allows governments to postpone the investment needed to attract and retain staff here, and should be treated as a policy failure to overcome, rather than justification to continue the failure.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. The GMC’s 2019 Fair to Refer? report found immigrant doctors were 250% more likely to be referred for a formal disciplinary process over fitness to practice concerns than their British-trained counterparts. Rather than invite reflection, the GMC attributes this to “unconscious bias and lack of strong support networks for BAME doctors”. Likewise, the annual cost of clinical negligence claims against the NHS tripled between 2006/7 and 2024/5.
Meanwhile, opportunities to train remain scarce. Across UK medicine admissions in 2025, there were 25,925 applicants and 11,765 acceptances. England funded 8,230 undergraduate medical places in 2025/26. Britain should expand opportunities for capable students here, alongside the clinical placements and postgraduate posts needed to complete their training. Our medical services have become increasingly dependent on overseas trained medical staff, often importing them from countries with a far greater need for doctors, nurses, midwives and just about every other medic. This is shameful, not least because it is happening when perfectly able, aspiring health professionals here in Britain are being rejected.
