NHS ‘may not survive Brexit’ if EU staff forced to leave

The NHS would struggle to survive if there was a mass exodus of staff as a result of a hard Brexit deal, the UK’s largest nursing union has warned.

Julie Williams, a member of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said the health service was already being stretched by staff shortages and expressed doubts it could cope with “such a large loss” of its workforce.

The union backed the claims, telling The Independent there were “a lot of EU nurses working in the UK” and that they were vital to the service’s ability to provide safe care.

Ms Williams, who works as a nurse at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire, where 76 per cent of the population voted to leave, told Sky News: “There are 33,000 EU nurses currently working across the NHS in the UK, and there are 330-odd working in this particular organisation.

“I don't think that any organisation could sustain such a large loss in one hit and cope with it.”

Ms Williams said the trust that runs the hospital employed 339 people from the EU but, like much of the NHS, was still facing staff shortages, and was currently looking for more than 300 nurses and midwives.

She added that doctors were also being brought over from Europe due to a shortage of local GPs.

The RCN told The Independent it shared Ms Williams' concerns, reiterating its previous calls on the Government to secure the futures of EU nurses following the Brexit vote.

In July, the union warned of the potential damage continuing uncertainty over their future could have on the trust's ability to provide safe care, urging that it was vital that EU colleagues were supported to stay.

More than 17,000 nurses and health visitors in the UK are said to be from EU countries, accounting for 6 per cent of total staffing numbers.

The figure for doctors is even higher, with just under 10,000 hospital doctors coming from EU countries – about 9 per cent of the total.

Meanwhile, 36 per cent of staff in the health service were born overseas, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Prior to the Brexit vote a survey of hospital leaders revealed 80 per cent of NHS trust chief executives and chairs believed the service would face a staffing crisis if the UK were to leave the EU.

Following the EU referendum in June, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the NHS should slash numbers of foreign doctors and hire British ones in their place when the UK leaves the EU.