Plans to cut NHS international workforce appear overambitious, say MPs

Ministers’ plans to cut the international workforce within NHS England appear overambitious, MPs have said, as a report reveals the health service saved more than £14bn by recruiting doctors, nurses and midwives from overseas.

Many of the countries recruited from were struggling with staff shortages, and the UK had a moral duty to offer support, rather than simply extracting what it needed, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on global health and security found.

The group’s inquiry into the benefits and costs of international health worker recruitment heard that the scale of NHS reliance on overseas workers meant the government’s plan to reduce international recruitment to around 10% by 2035 was overambitious.

“The NHS has not operated at that level for decades,” said Andrew Mitchell, the former development minister who chaired the inquiry.

Thirty-six per cent of UK doctors and 24% of nurses and midwives were trained elsewhere in the world.

The number of visas granted to healthcare professionals has fallen sharply in recent years. But overseas staff would be needed “for the foreseeable future”, the APPG said.

Mitchell added: “We must grow our own workforce. But in a shrinking world, pretending health workforces are purely national assets, is no longer credible. If we benefit from health workers trained overseas, we also have a duty to help strengthen the systems they come from.”

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Source: The Guardian, 16 March 2026