RCN letter to Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
13 November 2025
Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and
Development Affairs
04 November 2025
Dear Foreign Secretary,
On behalf of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), I extend our congratulations on your appointment as Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. We look forward to working with you and your team in the coming months to address the significant challenges ahead.
The Royal College of Nursing is the professional body and trade union for nursing staff in the United Kingdom with over 560,000 members working across both health and social care. Together with our international partners, we seek to promote the voice of nursing around the world.
Nurses across the world are working in impossible conditions to provide care for patients in volatile and insecure conflict settings. You may have seen our report Care Among the Chaos: Voices of Nurses Working in Conflict which details the testimony from nursing staff across Gaza, Myanmar, Afghanistan and detailing the hardship they and the communities they serve are facing in humanitarian crises and war.
Nursing staff along with all other healthcare workers must be able to work without the threat of violence or obstruction to the delivery of care. We ask that the UK government work with international partners to demand an end to the deliberate targeting of health workers and health systems and that those who do deliberately target face swift justice.
I am also deeply concerned that recent World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts still estimate a global shortage of 5.8 million nurses. There can be no universal health coverage (UHC) without a strong workforce to deliver it. Nurses are central to this aim, making up almost half of the global health workforce.
In the context of global nursing shortages, the UK’s reliance on international recruitment in recent years has been not only unsustainable but unethical. WHO guidance
recommends that countries facing the most pressing health workforce shortages related to universal health coverage should be provided with safeguards to discourage active recruitment and prioritised for health personnel development. However, in the past four years, more than 20,000 new joiners to the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council register received their training in a country on the WHO’s health workforce support and safeguards list.
As we continue to see increasing instability around the world and challenges to global population health, it is vital that the UK supports the global health system. We are seriously concerned by the consequences of the cuts to aid and believe the UK’s current commitment to spend just 0.3% of gross national income (GNI) on Official Development Assistance (ODA) is inadequate to address global health challenges. I urge you as Foreign Secretary to be a voice within government for the reinstatement of the 0.7% of GNI ODA spending target and to recognise the scale of the global workforce challenge that confronts our shared aspiration for health and development. Stronger health systems, with nurses at their centre, reduce instability make us less vulnerable to the global health threats of the future.
Congratulations once again. My staff and I have yet to meet with officials on many of these important issues listed above. I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the issues above and to share the incredible contribution that nursing staff make to the health of our communities both at home and across the world.
Yours sincerely
Professor Nicola Ranger
General Secretary & Chief Executive
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and
Development Affairs
04 November 2025
Dear Foreign Secretary,
On behalf of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), I extend our congratulations on your appointment as Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. We look forward to working with you and your team in the coming months to address the significant challenges ahead.
The Royal College of Nursing is the professional body and trade union for nursing staff in the United Kingdom with over 560,000 members working across both health and social care. Together with our international partners, we seek to promote the voice of nursing around the world.
Nurses across the world are working in impossible conditions to provide care for patients in volatile and insecure conflict settings. You may have seen our report Care Among the Chaos: Voices of Nurses Working in Conflict which details the testimony from nursing staff across Gaza, Myanmar, Afghanistan and detailing the hardship they and the communities they serve are facing in humanitarian crises and war.
Nursing staff along with all other healthcare workers must be able to work without the threat of violence or obstruction to the delivery of care. We ask that the UK government work with international partners to demand an end to the deliberate targeting of health workers and health systems and that those who do deliberately target face swift justice.
I am also deeply concerned that recent World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts still estimate a global shortage of 5.8 million nurses. There can be no universal health coverage (UHC) without a strong workforce to deliver it. Nurses are central to this aim, making up almost half of the global health workforce.
In the context of global nursing shortages, the UK’s reliance on international recruitment in recent years has been not only unsustainable but unethical. WHO guidance
recommends that countries facing the most pressing health workforce shortages related to universal health coverage should be provided with safeguards to discourage active recruitment and prioritised for health personnel development. However, in the past four years, more than 20,000 new joiners to the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council register received their training in a country on the WHO’s health workforce support and safeguards list.
As we continue to see increasing instability around the world and challenges to global population health, it is vital that the UK supports the global health system. We are seriously concerned by the consequences of the cuts to aid and believe the UK’s current commitment to spend just 0.3% of gross national income (GNI) on Official Development Assistance (ODA) is inadequate to address global health challenges. I urge you as Foreign Secretary to be a voice within government for the reinstatement of the 0.7% of GNI ODA spending target and to recognise the scale of the global workforce challenge that confronts our shared aspiration for health and development. Stronger health systems, with nurses at their centre, reduce instability make us less vulnerable to the global health threats of the future.
Congratulations once again. My staff and I have yet to meet with officials on many of these important issues listed above. I would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the issues above and to share the incredible contribution that nursing staff make to the health of our communities both at home and across the world.
Yours sincerely
Professor Nicola Ranger
General Secretary & Chief Executive
Page last updated - 13/11/2025
