Two new wins!

The NHS staffing crisis

We won! More overseas doctors and nurses will be allowed to work in UK hospitals to ease the staffing crisis.

The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has agreed to remove doctors and nurses from the tier two visa cap. Over 100,000 of us piled in to contact our MPs, sign a petition and get in touch with the Home Office. Now, the government has announced plans to ease visa rules, which will provide desperately needed support for our NHS.

Our NHS is at breaking point. But until today, doctors and nurses from overseas who wanted to work in our NHS were being stopped by government red tape. The tier two visa cap sets a target for the number of people who are allowed to migrate to Britain. However, doctors and nurses were included in this target. This oversight failed to recognise the vital role that doctors, nurses and specialists from overseas could play in saving our NHS.

Together we’ve managed to fight made up targets and red tape – and helped to make sure our NHS is on the way to getting the doctors and nurses needed to ease the staffing crisis. If only one of us had spoken out, we would have been easy to ignore. But in our thousands, we made sure our message was hear. And we’ve made real change.

The environment after Brexit

We won! Important environmental principles will stay after Brexit. 59,000 of us emailed, tweeted and even called our MPs – asking them to support changes to the EU Withdrawal Bill to keep important environmental protections after Brexit. And they listened! After our MPs added their names to a proposed change to the law, the government decided to accept that change. One MP even mentioned our emails in parliament, saying she’d had a “flurry” of emails from constituents worried that the government could scrap plans to protect our environment. [1]

The environmental standards we’ve saved, also known as the environmental principles, are part of the rules the UK currently has as part of the EU. These standards have helped ban bee-killing pesticides and ensured our water is clean and safe to drink. They make sure companies that pollute our rivers, oceans or forests are responsible for paying for the clean-up.

And together we’ve made sure they’ll stay after Brexit! The government will now be required in law to bring forward a new environment bill to protect the principles. This is an amazing first step to protecting our beautiful forests, rolling hills and flowing rivers forever.

[1] Conservative MP Vicky Ford asked a question to Environment Minister Michael Gove about the vote:
“In the past couple of days I have received a veritable flurry of emails from my constituents, who want to ensure that our environmental laws will be strengthened, or at least maintained, after Brexit. What reassurance would the Secretary of State like to give to the people of Chelmsford?”
Hansard: Oral Answers to Questions:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-06-07/debates/BE4BDCB0-0FA3-4F65-829A-F58E2DA38D9C/OralAnswersToQuestions