NHS: Has Immigration Saved The Health Service?

By Gillian Joseph, Sky News Presenter

The majority perception of immigration, as suggested by a Sky News exclusive poll, is that immigrants have been detrimental to British society, that they have taken out far more than they have put in.

But is that the true picture? There are those who would suggest that in fact immigration has saved at least one British institution from ruin - the NHS.

In his immigration speech in March, Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Our country has benefited immeasurably from immigration.

"If you go into any hospital you'll find people from Uganda, India and Pakistan who are caring for our sick and vulnerable."

Immigrant workers have been bolstering the NHS since its inception

That's the situation today and it has been the case since the 1940s.

Immigrant workers have been bolstering the NHS from its inception and seem set to continue to be its backbone.

The NHS is celebrating its 65th birthday this year. It was July 1948 that saw the birth of the Welfare State.

The idea was to provide health care free at the point of use for all. But resourcing the venture was problematic from the outset.

Nurses from the Commonwealth were invited to join the NHS

The main issue was the chronic lack of nurses and so initially, young women from the Commonwealth were invited to come to Britain after World War Two to assist with labour shortages.

The message was loud and clear - Britain Needs You.

The arrival of the ship the SS Empire Windrush in 1948 marked the beginning of post-war mass immigration.

Having made an 8,000-mile journey, the 492 passengers on board from various Caribbean Islands were keen to start work and a new life in what they called the "Mother Country".

SS Empire Windrush brought in workers from the Caribbean

Once they arrived though, many found the welcome to be far from warm.

Immigrant nurses tell of patients refusing to be touched by them unless they washed themselves first, so as to remove the dirt from their skins.

Having to explain that they were not dirty but it was in fact their skin colour was never something they envisaged having to do.

But despite the overt racism and sometimes difficult conditions, substantial numbers were still prepared to make the journey.

By 1955 there were official nursing recruitment programmes across 16 British colonies and former colonies.

Over the next two decades, the British colonies and former colonies provided a constant supply of cheap labour to meet staffing shortages in the NHS.

The number of women entering Britain to work in the Health Service grew steadily until the early 1970s.

Ten years after the Windrush docked in Essex, Shirla Philogene arrived in the UK from St Vincent to train to become a nurse.

Shirla Philogene was given an OBE in recognition of her services to nursing

She retired in 1989 after 31 years of service and is confident that her contribution and that of others like her has made the NHS what it is today.

Shirla, who has been honoured with an OBE to acknowledge her services to nursing, believes the Windrush nurses were dedicated with a particularly robust work ethic.

They were determined and prepared to face whatever challenges were thrown at them in order to care for their patients.

The hard work of nurses like Shirla was generally recognised and in the early 60s a second invitation was extended, when the then Conservative health minister Enoch Powell asked members of the Commonwealth to come to the UK to work in the health service.

Enoch Powell spoke of the burden of immigration

But that invitation was to eventually morph into a stark prediction about the negative consequences of immigration.

Mr Powell's infamous 1968 Rivers of Blood speech warned that the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill would provide immigrant communities with the impetus to rise up against their fellow citizens.

He wrote: "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

Thirty years after the speech, Edward Heath said that Mr Powell's remarks on the economic burden of immigration had been "not without prescience".

In 1991, Margaret Thatcher said Mr Powell had "made a valid argument, if in sometimes regrettable terms".

But without immigration, would we have today's health service?

Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, is unequivocal in his analysis.

He believes that had nurses and other workers not been recruited from overseas, the NHS simply could not have functioned.

Looking to the future, he predicts that in three years' time there will be a deficit in the workforce in London and elsewhere, forcing hospitals to look overseas to fill the gap.

Today there are 85,000 immigrant nurses registered in the UK and recent General Medical Council figures suggest 37% of all NHS doctors qualified abroad.

If there is one institution where immigration has had a profound impact, it has to be the National Health Service.

With a worldwide shortage of health workers, its reliance on immigrants looks set to continue.

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