£100m health service spends on foreign language translators could fund 3,0000 more nurses

THE £100million annual cost of ensuring NHS services can be fully accessed in languages other than English could pay for 3,000 more nurses, figures show.

- Giles Sheldrick

Taxpayers pick up the bill for translation and interpretation for hundreds of thousands of patients as NHS trusts and Integrated Care Boards routinely convert standard hospital and health literature into languages including Romanian, Arabic, Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi.

Former NHS cancer consultant Karol Sikora said: "With funds so tight...the priority must always be patient care. Translation and interpretation costs, however noble, are not a necessity. In an ideal world, we could provide that. But with constricted budgets and constricted resources, frontline support must always come first." Professor Sikora, right, added: "The NHS has to get back to basics - providing timely and efficient care.

"Fund frontline staff over translation/interpretation teams. Use Google Translate."

An NHS spokesman said: "As well as legal duties, translation and interpretation services are vital for patient safety and it is absolutely right the NHS in England offers these."