Brexit will boost NHS pay, claims nurse MP

Don’t believe the scaremongers – leaving the EU will release funds for the NHS and should increase nurse wages, says nurse turned MP Nadine Dorries

The NHS is safe with Brexit. I know that isn’t what we were told during the referendum campaign by the leaders of Project Fear, but it’s true.

Now that we are leaving the European Union we will have more control of our health service.

This will allow us to increase the resources available and ensure we have the medical staff needed to keep it running.

Before the referendum, one major concern of those who care about our NHS was that a potential free trade deal between the EU and the United States – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – would see US multinationals pillaging the health service for their own profit.

Whether or not that was ever a realistic prospect then, it definitely isn’t now.

Trade deals

When we sign our new trade deals with other countries it will not be done by anonymous and unelected officials in Brussels, it will be done by trade negotiators answerable to our elected government.

No prime minister would bargain away control of the NHS because he or she would pay the political price and be voted out of office – and rightly so.

We will soon be saving £350 million a week by not sending this money to Brussels and I will be pushing the new government to commit to spending as much of this contribution to EU funds as possible on the NHS.

Pay rises

I know nursing staff have had limited pay rises for several years and it is time that changed. We need more nurses receiving better pay to improve levels of care in the health service. We can now do this.

The NHS runs in large part on the hard work of people who have come to the UK in recent years to help tend to our sick and care for older people.

I will never support a Brexit deal that does not protect the rights of these people. I will fight until my last political breath before I let any NHS staff be deported as a result of leaving the EU.

I also know it is true that many of those migrant workers in the NHS from non-EU countries struggled to get here in the first place.

Great opportunity

The discriminatory immigration practices that see us turn away people from the Commonwealth and other areas will stop, and highly qualified doctors and nurses from across the world will be able to easily come to the UK to work where they are needed.

The referendum campaign is over and the people of the UK have decided to leave the EU. This is a great opportunity for our NHS and the dedicated staff working in it.

There will be some uncertainty as the markets adjust to the new reality and while we begin building a fairer and stronger economy. But this, for our NHS, is the soundest footing for continuing to provide outstanding health care according to need and free at the point of use.

Nadine Dorries is Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire and a former nurse