LESS than 48 hours after the UK began negotiations with the EU over Brexit, The National can today reveal proof positive that Brexit is already seriously damaging Scotland’s health and social care sector.

Social care organisations and companies in particular are already having serious recruitment problems, with normal recruitment campaigns in the EU being cancelled because of a lack of response from potential workers who have been scared off by Brexit. Calling for the softest possible Brexit, Dr Donald Macaskill, chief executive of industry body Scottish Care, told The National: “The total social care workforce is about 200,000 and our members employ 103,000 people across Scotland. Without a doubt, Brexit is already having a significant negative impact.

“There were already difficulties in recruitment into social care, and at the moment there is a 28 per cent vacancy rate for nurses in social care – one in 10 nurses in Scotland works in social care.

“What had previously happened was that the gap was plugged by people being recruited from Europe and further afield, but people in Europe are simply not coming to work here.

“They are not even entertaining the notion of coming to work in a place which ostensibly is saying to them ‘you are not welcome’.

“Several of the major providers are ceasing to recruit in Europe simply because, not surprisingly, nobody is coming through the doors of the recruitment centres.

“At the same time as Brexit, we have had the new requirements by the Home Office for workers coming from outside Europe, including a language test. That is why the UK as a whole has seen a 98 per cent drop in the number of nurses wanting to work here. Added to Brexit, that’s been a real double whammy.

“Recruitment to social care is already at a crisis point. Nine out of 10 of our members are struggling to recruit at the moment. A hard Brexit would be much worse, but even a softer Brexit without remedial action is having a profound negative effect, and that impacts on the folks who are being cared for.

“I don’t think the politicians have woken up to what is happening now, never mind what might happen as we get to the end of the negotiations.

“This crisis is now. We don’t need to wait two years to see what the effects of Brexit will be, we’re experiencing it now with the recruitment crisis, contracts being handed back and businesses and charities in danger of going to the wall.”

Macaskill called for immediate guarantees for EU nationals working here: “They deserve the dignity of knowing they are welcome and having their presence enshrined in immediate commitment rather than used as a bargaining chip at the tables of Brexit negotiations.”

The NHS across the UK is also suffering from Brexit already, according to Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said: “Brexit poses many severe and immediate threats to the NHS, some of which are already apparent, like the loss of skilled health workers.

“Looking ahead, we can expect delayed approval of new drugs, weakening of environmental standards and working conditions, and even loss of access to the medical isotopes used for diagnosis and cancer treatment as we won’t be able to import them.

“However, in the longer term, the greatest Brexit dangers are from the damage to the economy, already becoming apparent, and governmental paralysis when faced with the enormous scale of the task ahead.”

McKee feels the Norwegian model of membership of the single market while accepting freedom of movement for people could be the best bet for Brexit.

He said: “A hard Brexit would be disastrous but if we take the Norwegian model then we could probably adapt that and it won’t be too bad, but it’s a pretty stupid thing to do because you end up paying for it and don’t get anything of what you were wanting out of Brexit.

“Numbers of nurses applying to come from the rest of the EU are in freefall. However, the problems go well beyond the NHS, affecting research but also the financial services sector, and with it the tax revenues that it generates, as well as the agricultural sector, and our ability to feed ourselves at a time when our trading relations with the rest of the world are being put in jeopardy.

“Even before any restrictions come into force, large numbers of Europeans believe that the writing is on the wall for their future in the UK.”