In future all British nurses will be home-grown

The British government has announced that in future it intends to cut back on hiring junior nurses from abroad as there is no longer a shortage.

However the move has been declared "short-termism in the extreme" by nurses leaders.

The Health Minister Lord Warner says the recruitment on a large scale of overseas nurses was only ever intended to be a short term measure.

He says the aim of the NHS has always been to look towards home-grown staff in the first instance and have a diverse workforce that reflects local communities.

It appears Britain now has more than 379,000 qualified nurses working in the NHS, which is 82,000 more than in 1997 along with record levels of nurses undergoing training.

Expanded training programmes and better working conditions mean the supply of nurses is now sufficient and the manpower shortage has eased.

The move means general nursing will now be removed from the Home Office's shortage occupation list, meaning that hospitals will only be able to recruit from abroad if they are unable to fill vacancies locally.

It seems that 12,500 of the 33,250 nurses who registered to work in Britain last year had qualified abroad, many from India and Australia.

The move has been criticised by the Royal College of Nursing who believe that the plan will have far-reaching and immediate effects.

RCN General Secretary Beverly Malone says as many as 150,000 nurses will retire in the next five to 10 years and all will not be able to be replaced with home grown nurses alone.

In recent years hospitals have been freezing nursing recruitment and cutting posts as they struggle to balance their budgets and nurses heckled Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt at the RCN's annual conference when she stated that the health service was enjoying its best year ever.

According to the health department NHS employers in London, Leeds, Manchester and Essex all expected to take on most of their new nurses, but admitted to there being problems in the East Midlands.

The Shadow Health Minister Andrew Murrison has also accused the government of a "short-sighted" move and says that demographic changes over the next ten years mean that there will be a continuing need for the ethical recruitment of healthcare professionals from abroad, including nurses.

He suspects the move is designed to save the government embarrassment as hospitals cut jobs and freeze nursing posts in a desperate attempt to resolve budget deficits.