Vegetables are rotting in the fields for want of Eastern European pickers, patients are being left untreated thanks to a haemorrhaging of EU nurses, our universities are in peril as European academics flee from a xenophobic Britain which no longer wants them.
That, at least, is the picture that is continually presented to us by the rearguard Remain lobby, which wants us to think that the EU nationals who make our economy go round have had enough and, as the Guardian says of nurses and midwives, are ‘leaving in droves’.
There is one problem with this analysis: it is directly contradicted by the facts. Figures released by the Office of National Statistics yesterday show that in the third quarter of this year there were 2.38 million EU nationals working in Britain – a rise of 112,000 on the same period a year earlier. The data comes on the heel of figures from NHS Digital which put paid to the claim that the NHS is suffering a ‘Brexodus’ of EU staff. At the end of June 2017, there were 3,181 extra EU staff working in the NHS than at the end of June 2016. There were an extra 441 EU doctors, 27 more midwives and an extra 136 ambulance staff. Some exodus. The net number of EU nurses did fall by 289 (a loss of 1.3 per cent) but there is another reason for this – which also explains a much more dramatic fall in EU nurses registering to work in Britain, endlessly repeated by those opposed to Brexit. More stringent language tests introduced in January 2016 for overseas nurses wanting to work in Britain had a huge effect on nurses being registered from July 2016 onwards (the registration process can take up to six months to complete). According to one agency which recruits overseas nurses 80 per cent of applicants have been failing the overly-academic tests, including even some native English speakers from Australia. The test was relaxed on 1 November this year.
Some continue to accuse the Leave campaign of ‘lies’, citing the £350 million a week figure which was painted on the side of the Vote Leave bus – a gross figure which did not take into account Britain’s rebate from the EU. But they are guilty of doing something worse – continually claiming that the economy in general and the NHS in particular is suffering from a Brexodus. They have been getting away with it by only ever quoting statistics on the numbers of workers leaving, and ignoring the numbers of workers arriving. There is and always has been, of course, a high turnover of foreign workers in the UK economy. Many workers come to Britain for a year’s placement, or to take up temporary employment while they wait to go to college.
What matters is the net figures. EU workers are continuing to come to work in Britain in increasing numbers – ‘despite Brexit’, as the BBC might say.
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