Nigel Farage has dismissed concerns about who will care for the elderly under the new immigration system because it is personally ’30 years away’ for him.
The Brexit Party leader was responding to the point made by the Royal College of Nursing who said that the newly-announced proposals will “not meet the health and care needs of the population”.
“They close the door to lower-paid healthcare support workers and care assistants from overseas, who currently fill significant numbers of posts in the health and care workforce,” said Dame Donna Kinnair, the organisation’s chief executive.
The UK Homecare Association also criticised the plans saying that “cutting off the supply of prospective careworkers under a new migration system, will pave the way for more people waiting unnecessarily in hospital or going without care”.
They added: “Telling employers to adjust, in a grossly underfunded care system, is simply irresponsible.”
Asked who was going to look after Nigel Farage when he turns 85 and is old and “in need of care”, Farage dismissed a question from a Sky News presenter about who was going to look after him.
“Somebody who is trained to do it,” responded Farage shrugging his shoulders and smiling.
“Under this new system there will be a lot of people who are not as fortunate as you are,” responded the presenter.
“Luckily that is 30 years away that problem as far as I’m concerned,” said the Brexiteer.
The presenter, however, pointed out there will be those “over the next two, three, four, five years in desperate need of care and they won’t receive anything”.
Sighing the politician insisted that “before 2004 before we had an open-door to eight and then 10 former Communist countries, the elderly got looked after, hotels ran, and strawberries didn’t rot in the fields.”
He said that the “big employers need to recognise their days of cheap labour… is finished”.
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Pressed again on the question, Farage insisted: “The elderly will get looked after, the fruit will be picked, the buses will run. These are scare stories. We have left the European Union, the government is now in control of immigration and work permits and all of those things, and I have no doubt that adjustments will happen every single year”.
He said that those making the warnings over immigration were “those who want cheap labour”, and the government’s plans were a “step in the right direction”.
Any serious questions about the proposals, Farage claimed, were for the home secretary Priti Patel to address.