NHS spent more than £500m on hiring foreign staff in just five years

2023-03-26

REVEALED: The NHS has spent more than £500m on hiring foreign staff in just five years – including on overseas trips, long-haul flights and visas

Nearly £584m of taxpayers’ cash has been splashed on NHS recruitment costs
Investigation found that 14 trusts spent £10m or more on foreign recruitment
The extraordinary total would almost fund a one per cent pay rise for key staff

NHS managers have blown more than half a billion pounds on hiring foreign staff in just five years.

Nearly £584million of taxpayers’ cash has been splashed on recruitment costs including overseas trips, long-haul flights and visas.

Millions were handed to agency middle-men who supply doctors and nurses from abroad. Some of the cash even went on furniture for international workers along with iPads and gym memberships.

The extraordinary total spent by health trusts across the country, revealed under Freedom of Information laws, would almost be enough to fund a 1 per cent pay rise for nurses, paramedics and physiotherapists, who have staged crippling strike action over wages and working conditions.

An investigation found that 14 trusts have spent over £10million each on foreign recruitment in the last five years, with one paying out more than £34million. Last night, critics slammed the huge outlay on foreign recruitment and warned that taxpayers expect the money they contribute to be focused on direct care.

Firm raking in a fortune

Acacium’s directors – who are paid up to £609,000 –include Adrien Faure, 38, married to oligarch’s daughter Maria Baibakova, 37

A leading recruitment agency supplying the NHS with UK and overseas staff saw its turnover quadruple in a year.

Acacium Group’s turnover from temporary staff leapt to £748million in 2021 from £175million in 2020, the Health Service Journal reported, although the 2020 sum covered a shorter accounting period.

Its most recent accounts show an operating profit of £23.4million in 2021.

The group owns Scottish Nursing Guild and Thornbury Nursing Services, the two agencies that have received the most NHS money, totalling £283million, of any recruitment firm over the past six years, The Times reported.

Acacium’s directors – who are paid up to £609,000 –include Adrien Faure, 38, married to oligarch’s daughter Maria Baibakova, 37.

Acacium said the huge increase in turnover was due to ‘unprecedented demand’ in the pandemic.

Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay said: ‘We don’t have enough domestic staff and trusts must keep up staffing levels or face being sued. I would rather see these enormous expenses put into the pot and giving payroll staff a pay rise, which would keep and encourage people into the profession.’ He also questioned whether it was morally right to ‘take nurses away from developing countries’.

Despite the shortage of staff in the NHS, the Government has told UK universities to limit the number of places for medical students, which are heavily subsidised, or face £100,000 fines per student.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘It is utterly ludicrous that thousands of straight-A students in England are being denied the chance to train for a brilliant career in the NHS, yet eye-watering sums of taxpayers’ money are spent recruiting medics from abroad.’

John O’Connell, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, added: ‘Taxpayers are bound to question why they are funding these globe-trotting recruitment drives.’

Around 220,000 of the 1.4 million staff in the NHS are foreign nationals, the most common non-British nationalities being Indian, Filipino and Nigerian.

In 2022, 63 per cent of doctors who registered with the General Medical Council – in both private and NHS roles – were trained abroad, up from 47 per cent in 2017.

Of the 220 health trusts across the UK, 49 trusts failed to respond to Freedom of Information requests regarding foreign recruitment expenditure, meaning the true total will be much larger than £584million. In many cases, the vast sums did not include salaries but represented only recruitment and relocation costs.

Kettering General Hospital alone has spent £5.1million on overseas recruitment since 2019 – including £1.19million on costs including recruitment agency fees, £485,056 on accommodation and over £1million on visas. The pay for the foreign nurses recruited in that time was only £317,665.

The biggest spender was Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust, paying out £34million since 2019. Julie Dawes, chief nurse at the trust, said overseas recruitment helped to ‘ensure our nursing vacancy rates are as low as possible’. The trust says it is also less reliant on UK locum staff due to foreign recruits.

Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust, meanwhile, spent £28million and Barts Health NHS Trust spent £22million.

An NHS spokesman said evidence shows that overseas recruitment is ‘less expensive than relying on agency staff, and on average internationally recruited nurses stay working in the NHS for longer’. A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘International recruitment is a cost-effective way of recruiting permanent staff, alongside our progress in training more staff in the UK.’

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