The NHS hasn’t got an ‘immigration’ problem – it’s got a privatisation one

I spend a lot of time online speaking to people about the NHS, and about UK politics in general. I receive a lot of messages from both NHS patients and staff explaining their experiences within the system, and they’ll often also tell me why they think the problems exist in the first place.

This serves as a very useful barometer, because it allows me to identify the impact of unhelpful media messaging about the service. It also reveals a lot about attitudes towards one politician or another, the priorities of the public, and the things they’re most worried about. 

In recent years, a growing number of people became deeply unhappy with the Conservative Party’s actions towards the NHS. I received many messages from people who felt unhappy about the “austerity cuts”, the behaviour of Boris Johnson and other senior Conservative politicians, and the lack of definitive action to invest in the NHS as we emerged from the pandemic.

They saw the problems developing in the NHS; the deterioration of services, the under-staffing, the poor treatment of the staff who remained – and many attributed those problems to our political leaders. 

This summer, however, and particularly over the past few weeks, another theme has emerged.

There are still many people blaming politicians for the problems in the NHS, but I am also receiving a growing number of messages and comments under my posts suggesting that NHS problems are related to immigration.

Immigration is NOT to blame for NHS chaos

Just the other morning, someone told me that there should be rules dictating how long someone should live within the UK before they could access a GP. I’m being told (often in aggressive terms) that the service is no longer fit for purpose because there are too many people arriving from overseas demanding treatment, and that if we fixed problems with immigration, then the NHS would function properly. 

It is undeniable that the NHS is under a lot of pressure. Several weeks ago, statistics came out from NHS England explaining that A&Es were experiencing their busiest summer ever.

GPs are very stretched at the moment as well, with recent figures from the Royal College of General Practitioners showing that the average full-time fully-qualified GP is now responsible for 149 patients more than they were five years ago. NHS staff are bearing the weight of responsibility for all of this which takes a huge toll. Meanwhile, patients are losing out, with 7.6 million cases on the NHS waiting list in England alone. Those waiting lists aren’t shrinking either; they have grown for the past three months in a row.

But immigrants aren’t to blame for these pressures. An article from the NHS Confederation last year explained that over 17% of NHS staff in England come from overseas, and when you consider nursing staff alone, that figure rises to close to 27%. They considered the overall impact of immigration on the NHS, and concluded that immigration “is of net benefit to the NHS”. So why are people focusing on immigration so heavily when they talk about the state of the NHS, and the possible ways that things could be improved? 

Blame the Tories, not the refugees

Horribly, I suspect that many people have absorbed inaccurate, unhelpful, sometimes even abusive messaging from certain media outlets and politicians in recent months, which scapegoat immigrants for many of the problems in our society instead of drawing attention to the policies and budgetary decisions made by the Conservative government. 

After all, it was the Conservative government who repeatedly pledged to increase the numbers of NHS GPs since 2015, and yet we now have less full-time GPs working in the NHS in England than we did nine years ago. 

It was the Conservative government who significantly cut the number of hospital beds, which has led to a situation where we now routinely have bed occupancy rates within our hospitals which are far higher than the accepted “safe” levels of 85%.

And it was the decisions of the Conservative government which led to real-terms pay cuts for thousands of NHS staff, many of whom have cut their hours or have left the NHS altogether. 

If we want to improve things in the NHS now, we are going to have to hold politicians to account for the decisions they make about our public healthcare system.

The NHS is in a state of emergency, and it’s not a situation which has been caused by immigrants, or by lazy, greedy staff or by NHS patients who expect too much. It’s been caused by poor policy, callous decisions, underfunding and privatisation, and we need change urgently now.

Featured image via the Canary