Wes Streeting has backed Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer after he said the NHS is hiring too many foreign staff members
The Opposition leader came under fire last week after saying the focus should be on training more people in the UK and immigration was not the answer to the crisis in the NHS.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting backed Sir Keir during LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, saying the service had become over-reliant on overseas talent.The Andrew Marr show tonight."We've got a problem in this country where we have a big staffing crisis at the heart of the NHS - it is the central issue in terms of the challenge that the NHS faces."And because the government have failed to recruit homegrown talent, they are forced to over-rely on staff from overseas.
He added: "There's a general point here which is that the NHS has always been and will always be an international recruiter and employer and I think it's wonderful thing that we have in the NHS people from around the world that make such an enormous difference to patients but there is an over- reliance.
"This summer we turned away huge numbers of straight A students from university, provided 3,000 fewer medicine places than the year before in the middle of a staffing crisis and that's an absurd way to run a health service.
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