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The government is to relax immigration rules to allow more non-EU skilled specialists into the UK. On Friday, the Home Office is required to affirm that foreign doctors and nurses will be excluded from the government's visa cap.
The cap - introduced by Theresa May when she was home secretary -sets a cutoff for all non-EU skilled workers at 20,700 individuals every year. However, NHS managers say the principles are making it hard to sufficiently select staff.
Saffron Cordery, of trade body NHS Providers, that the change was "absolutely the right decision. This is going to be a huge relief for trusts all over the nation who have been extremely attempting to fill their doctors and nurses vacancies,"
Alp Mehmet, of pressure group Migration Watch, said he has accepted the change but that it should not be the long-term solution.
"What we must not forget to do is train our own medical staff," he said, adding that the UK should not "raid other countries that need doctors and nurses a great deal more than we do".
- 1,600 IT workers and engineers denied UK visas
- 10 charts explaining the UK's immigration system
- Relaxing visa rules for doctors and nurses
The proposed changes relate to so-called Tier 2 visas - which are used by skilled workers from outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland. On Tuesday, it was reported by the Financial Times that visa applications by doctors from outside the European Economic Area were denied in a five-month duration, evidently as a result of the cap.
And in April, NHS managers cautioned that movement rules were hampering their capacity to discover doctors after visas for 100 Indian specialists were refused. NHS England had 35,000 nurse vacancies and nearly 10,000 doctor posts unfilled in February.
As indicated by think tank Global Future, 12.5% of NHS England's staff are from abroad. That number ascents to 45% in specific specialities including pediatric cardiologists and neurosurgeons. The current annual cap on these visas has also led to over 1,000 IT specialists and engineers being denied visas. The proposed change would just apply to doctors and nurses - however could free up a large number of visas for labourers in different businesses like IT and teaching, regardless of whether the 20,700 aggregate didn't change.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid implied at the changes earlier this month, telling the BBC's Andrew Marr he "saw the issue" with the cap and would take a "fresh look" at it. His latest move could indicate a new direction for immigration policy post-Brexit, the BBC's political correspondent Ben Wright said. It could also encourage others to argue for the net migration target - which has never been met - to be abandoned, he said.
