New ISC will deprive frontline services

The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that the new immigration skills charge (ISC) will divert funding away from the budget for frontline NHS services for years.

The penalty charge applies to visas requested from 6 April, and imposes an upfront cost of £1,000 per year of visa on employers who bring workers into the country on a Tier 2 visa. Tier 2 visas are only available for employers if they show the Home Office that they cannot find a UK or EEA worker to fill the post. Therefore, the skills charge means that NHS will be penalised for having to go outside the EEA to fill workforce gaps.

Data shows that £3.5 million would be taken out of the NHS budget if the ISC was applied to the 3,602 doctors who were granted Tier 2 visas for one year from August 2014 to August 2015, while Health Education England would have had to pay £1.6 million to cover sponsorship costs for their trainees for 2015/16.

Mark Porter, BMA council chair, said: “The government’s poor workforce planning has left it struggling to cope with huge and predictable staff shortages. The introduction of this charge could take desperately needed money from an already under-funded health service, worsen the current staffing issues, and impact the level of care that hospitals are able to provide to patients.”

Danny Mortimer, NHS Providers chief executive, added: “Because of the workforce shortfalls faced by the NHS and the time it takes to train new clinical staff, we anticipate employers will still need to recruit more non-EEA staff in the short to medium term.”