How the UK's NHS was built on the backs of Indian doctors and nurses

The UK’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting has praised the Indian diaspora for helping to build the country’s National Health Service.

Streeting, who was a keynote speaker at India Global Forum’s (IGF) annual Diwali celebration in London on Wednesday evening, said the NHS owes much to the Indian diaspora.

Streeting added that India will help the UK meet the challenges of modernising the country’s healthcare system for the future.

If I think about the way in which the NHS has been shaped in the last 76 years, we owe so much to the Indian diaspora here in Britain, said Streeting.

It was the generation that helped to build the NHS in 1948 and today we see the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren shaping its future, Streeting added.

The Labour Party, which came to power in July, has vowed to fix the struggling NHS.

But how did Indian doctors and nurses help build the state service?

Let’s take a closer look:

A brief look at NHS

First, let’s take a brief look at the NHS.

The idea for the NHS came during the Second World War.

At the time, Britain had been left ravaged by the immense destruction and its citizens were left without a safety net.

The NHS was part of the government’s idea to citizens with a comprehensive welfare system in the aftermath of the war.

In 1941, then labour minister Arthur Greenwood announced the formation of a committee to examine such matters under Sir William Beveridge.

Beveridge, who published his report in 1942, also consulted John Maynard Keynes, known as the father of modern economics.

After the Labour Party won a landslide victory in 1945, Clement Attlee became prime minister.

“We had not been elected to try to patch up an old system but to make something new … I therefore determined that we would go ahead as fast as possible with our programme,” Atlee reflected.

Attlee appointed trade unionist Aneurin Bevan as Minister of Health.

Bevan would work closely with then Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton to lay the groundwork for the NHS.

The NHS established on July 5, 1948.  It made Britain the first western government to give its citizens free healthcare.

Indian doctors and nurses lay foundation

As per The Guardian, the NHS was short-staffed from the outset.

It was migrants who, seeking more pay and a better life, came to the UK to work in the NHS.

Doctors from India and Pakistan found their way to the UK in the 1960s.

This came after a plea from then health minister Enoch Powell.

Over 18,000 came to the UK and propped up healthcare infrastructure in several areas.

By 2003, 73% of GPs in Wales’ Rhondda Valley were south Asian.

By 2008, 27,809 of the UK’s 243,910 registered doctors were from India.

Today, the NHS continues to rely on foreign workers, particularly Indian medical professionals, to fill its ranks.

The UK Standard in February reported that 1 in 5 people working in the NHS are now non-UK nationals.

According to a report entitled NHS staff from overseas: statistics, as of June 2023, 60,533 NHS staff are Indian.

Indians, who comprise 10.1 per cent of all FTE nurses and health visitors, are the most common non-UK nationality.

Of the nurses and health visitors, 31,922 are Indians.

There are 11,499 Indians in the NHS support staff and 3,039 Indians in the NHS infrastructure staff.

When it comes to hospital and community health service doctors who are non-UK nationals, Indians again lead this group – comprising 8 per cent of all doctors.

Since March 2020 the largest increases in reported nationality among doctors have been British, Indian, Egyptian, Pakistani and Nigerian, the report noted.

It added that 10,865 doctors in the NHS are Indian nationals.

The Guardian quoted Danny Mortimer, the chief executive of NHS Employers, as saying the data “shows how reliant the NHS has become on its talented international workforce” and that the service “could have very easily buckled under the pressures it has been put under” without such help.

Mortimer, however, issued a warning.

“Teams across the NHS are hugely appreciative to their overseas colleagues for their support and contribution. But there is no room for complacency as we will not be able to continue to draw on international recruitment to fill NHS vacancies for ever.”

According to The Times of India, the service in March announced it would recruit around 2,000 doctors from India.

But Parag Singhal, national secretary, British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), told News18 that though the NHS is hiring from India, it is not in such large numbers.

“In fact, in the last three years, we have hired 140 doctors from India — all at junior and middle levels.”

Singhal in March said the NHS is looking at “consultant level” hiring .

“We’ve begun hiring according to our needs. However, it’s uncertain how many vacancies will arise in NHS hospitals. It could be as few as five or as many as a hundred.”

Starmer vows to fix NHS

The NHS, which for long had been a jewel in the UK’s crown, is going through some tough times lately.

In September, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to deliver a 10-year plan to fix the National Health Service, saying there would be no more money without reform to a system an independent report found to be in critical condition.

The NHS has been in crisis and endured some of its toughest winters in recent years, struggling to recover from the impacts of COVID-19, long backlogs for elective procedures and industrial action.

Starmer, whose Labour Party won a landslide victory in a July election, said the NHS needed “major surgery not sticking plaster solutions” to cope with the rising costs of looking after an ageing population without hiking taxes.

“Working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die,” Starmer said, adding he knew the changes would not be universally popular.

“Only fundamental reform and a plan for the long term can turn around the NHS and build a healthy society. That won’t be easy, it won’t be quick. It will take a 10-year plan.”

He offered few details of the plan, or when a concrete blueprint would be released.

Starmer has said the previous Conservative government “broke the NHS”, part of an inheritance he describes as one of the worst across the board from prisons to immigration.

The damning report by Ara Darzi, a surgeon who sits in the House of Lords upper house of parliament, found the NHS entered the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 with resilience at an “all-time low”, due to a lack of investment and a confused top-down reorganisation in the decade beforehand.

“Far too many people are waiting for too long and in too many clinical areas, quality of care has gone backwards,” Darzi said.

The nation’s poor health also has a knock-on effect on the economy, Starmer said, with Britain’s labour market suffering from the 2.8 million people who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness.

Starmer said he wanted to frame the new plan around shifting the NHS from analogue to digital, putting more care in the community, and a focus on preventing people getting sick.

The Conservatives said they agreed investment had to be married with reform but that Starmer missed an opportunity to announce meaningful plans. Health policy chief Victoria Atkins said: “They need to move from rhetoric to action.”

With inputs from agencies