Ministers are being urged to grant migrant NHS workers the indefinite right to remain as the health service braces for what could be one of the most difficult winters it has ever faced.
Cross-party MPs, along with medical bodies including the British Medical Association (BMA), have backed calls to change the law so that foreign health and social care staff are given the right to stay in the UK in honour of their commitment during the pandemic.
Liberal Democrat Christine Jardine, who is pushing the second reading of a private members’ bill that would make this happen, warned that failing to provide “certainty” to these healthcare workers would risk “fuelling the winter crisis with an exodus of staff”.
Dolin Bhagawati, interim co-chair of the Doctors’ Association UK, said it was “time the government assures [migrant NHS workers] that they will not be callously cast aside as a political inconvenience”.
“These are dedicated professionals who have performed heroic service over the last 18 months. Yet they live with the potential for deportation over their heads at any instant. The country they have sacrificed so much for should be welcoming them home,” he added.
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