Up to 50,000 nurses could quit UK over immigration plans, survey suggests
Up to 50,000 nurses could quit the UK over the government’s immigration proposals, plunging the NHS into its biggest ever workforce crisis, research suggests,Keir Starmer has vowed to curb net migration, with plans to force migrants to wait as long as 10 years to apply to settle in the UK instead of automatically gaining settled status after five years,The measures, which also include plans to raise foreign workers’ skills requirements to degree level and raise the standards of English language required for all types of visa, including dependents, are seen as an attempt to combat the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party,A public consultation on the plans is expected imminently, sources said,Nursing leaders told the Guardian the plans were “immoral” and treated highly skilled migrants as “political footballs”.
They said a mass exodus of nurses would threaten patient safety and derail government efforts to cut waiting times.Under the proposals, migrant workers in every sector of the economy would be hit.However, the most serious impact would be in the health service, which is already buckling under the strain of soaring demand for care amid staff shortages.A survey conducted by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), seen by the Guardian, found the plans have sparked profound distress among foreign NHS and social care staff.There are more than 200,000 internationally educated nursing staff, about 25% of the UK’s total workforce of 794,000.
The government’s proposed changes to indefinite leave to remain (ILR) have triggered alarm, with many now considering leaving the UK for good, the survey suggests.Almost one in 10 of all nursing staff working in the UK could be affected by the proposed changes.According to government figures, 76,876 have gained a visa since 2021 and would currently be entitled to settled status after five years.However, the plans to double that period to a decade have thrown their futures into jeopardy.In the RCN survey of more than 5,000 migrant nursing staff, 60% of those who do not have ILR said the shake-up was “very likely” to affect their plans to stay in the UK.
The finding suggests more than 46,000 could permanently quit the UK,Prof Nicola Ranger, the general secretary and chief executive of the RCN, said: “These proposals are not just immoral, they would be dangerous for our patients,No minister who has any interest in the success of our health and social care system would press ahead with extending the qualifying period for ILR,”She called for the plans to be dropped and said otherwise they risked deepening the NHS workforce crisis, threatening patient safety and derailing efforts to reduce treatment waiting times,“At a time when the government is failing to grow the domestic nursing workforce, it risks pushing tens of thousands of highly skilled nurses out of the UK,” she said.
The proposals also amounted to a “betrayal” of migrant nursing staff, Ranger said, with many of those without ILR having come to the UK to support the response to and after the Covid-19 crisis and now facing uncertainty.“Many of those who will soon be applying for ILR came to the UK during the pandemic, at great personal sacrifice.This is no way to repay them and amounts to a betrayal.Our international colleagues deserve clarity over their futures, not to be used as political footballs by politicians and left unable to access state support despite working in public services and paying taxes.”Without ILR, migrant nursing staff are unable to move easily between jobs, with their visas tying them to their employers, which Ranger said had led to exploitation in the social care system.
Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionThe proposals would also leave them unable to access state support such as child benefit and disability support payments for a decade, despite paying taxes.“If the government continues to show nursing staff they aren’t welcome here, they shouldn’t be surprised when they decide to leave.”The proposals have provoked serious distress among migrant nurses, according to the survey.It found that 53% were “extremely concerned” about their financial security, 52% were extremely concerned about the toll on their family and 49% were extremely concerned about the impact on their career.The plans could reduce the pool of foreign workers willing to come to the UK in future, the survey suggests.
Only 11% of respondents said they would still have migrated had the route to settlement been 10 years.The RCN is also calling on the government to cut the application fees for ILR, which remain £3,029 per person, despite an estimated processing cost of £523.In 2003, the fee was just £155.A government spokesperson said: “We are grateful to our overseas frontline healthcare workers, who bring compassion, deliver high-quality care and strengthen our health service, but net migration must come down.“As the Home Secretary has set out, under our proposed new settlement model, individuals will have the opportunity to reduce the qualifying period to settlement and citizenship based on contributions to the UK economy and society.
We will launch the consultation shortly and encourage health and care workers to take part when it launches.”
Uber hit with legal demands to halt use of AI-driven pay systems
Uber has been hit with legal demands to stop using its artificial intelligence driven pay systems, which have been blamed for significantly reducing the incomes of the ride hailing app’s drivers.A letter before action – sent to the US company by the non-profit foundation, Worker Info Exchange (WIE), on Wednesday – is understood to allege that the ride hailing app has breached European data protection law by varying driver pay rates through its controversial algorithm.James Farrar, the director of WIE, said: “Uber has leveraged artificial intelligence and machine learning to implement deeply intrusive and exploitative pay-setting systems that have damaged the livelihoods of thousands of drivers.“Through this collective action, we intend to get a fairer deal for drivers and ensure Uber is held financially accountable for the harm caused by this unlawful use of AI.“This case is … about securing transparent, fair and safe working conditions for all platform workers
Facebook and Instagram to start kicking Australian teenagers off platforms as social media ban looms
Australian Facebook and Instagram users under 16 will be notified starting Thursday that their accounts will be deactivated by 10 December, as Meta begins to comply with the Albanese government’s social media ban.Users affected by the ban will receive 14 days’ notice of their pending account deactivation through a combination of in-app messages, email and SMS before their access is cut off.The ban will affect users on Facebook and Instagram, as well as Threads, as an Instagram account is required to use that platform. Messenger is excluded from the ban – but Meta has had to develop a way for users to keep access to Messenger without a Facebook account as a result of the ban.Meta will begin stopping access to existing accounts and blocking under-16s from registering new accounts from 4 December, with access removed for all affected accounts by 10 December, the company said
TikTok to give users power to reduce amount of AI content on their feeds
TikTok is giving users the power to reduce the amount of artificial intelligence-made content on their feeds, as it revealed the platform hosts more than 1bn AI videos.The change, which is being tested over the next few weeks before a global rollout, comes as new video-generating tools such as OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo 3 have spurred a surge in AI content online.The Guardian revealed in August that nearly one in 10 of the fastest-growing YouTube channels globally only show AI-generated videos. Many qualify as “AI slop”, the term for low-quality, mass-produced content that is often nonsensical or surreal.Jade Nester, TikTok’s European director of public policy for safety and privacy, said: “We know from our community that many people enjoy content made with AI tools, from digital art to science explainers, and we want to give people the power to see more or less of that, based on their own preferences
Meta wins major US antitrust case and won’t have to break off WhatsApp or Instagram
Meta defeated a major challenge to its business on Tuesday when a US judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.The case, brought by the US Federal Trade Commission, could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, with the former FTC chair accusing the company of operating a “buy or bury” scheme against nascent competitors. The tech giant bought WhatsApp for $19bn in 2014. Losing either the image-based social network, which generates an estimated half of Meta’s revenue, or the world’s most popular messaging app could have done existential damage to Meta’s empire.The US district judge James Boasberg issued his ruling on Tuesday after the historic antitrust trial wrapped up in late May
What is Cloudflare – and why did its outage take down so many websites?
The internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare suffered an outage on Tuesday, making many websites inaccessible for about three hours.Cloudflare is a global cloud services and cybersecurity firm. It provides datacentres, website and email security, protection from data loss and defences against cyber threats, among other things. It describes itself as providing an “immune system for the internet”, with technology that sits between its clients and the wider world that blocks billions of cyber threats daily. It also uses its global infrastructure to speed up internet traffic
Cloudflare says ‘incident now resolved’ after outage causes error messages across the internet – as it happened
The firm has just issued an update saying it believes the incident over.A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.I’ve just quickly tested several key sites which are loading again.Key sites around the world went down, some for a few hours, after a widely relied-upon Internet infrastructure company suffered an unknown issueThe outages took place in the early hours of US morning and during UK business hoursIt affected users of everything from Spotify, ChatGPT, X, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Canva to retail websites of Visa, Vodafone and Vinted and UK grocery chains Asda and M&S
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