The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) has cautiously welcomed plans to restrict the hire of overseas nurses.

The plans, announced by Health Minister Lord Warner last week, would see the NHS forced to open up any vacancies firstly to British nurses or nurses from the European Economic Area (EEA). Only if posts remained unfilled after this could the NHS look abroad.

Previously, the NHS could recruit from overseas without restriction.

"The recruitment of nurses from abroad was a very necessary part of providing front line services to the NHS," says Anne Fairweather, external relations manager for REC. "If the NHS judges that it is possible to deliver these services without the need to recruit from abroad then this reflects the more stable situation we are in today."

However, she added: "Any freeze on overseas recruitment should be reviewed if this situation changes."

The announcement has come under fire from the Royal College of Nursing's General Secretary, Dr Beverly Malone, who claimed foreign nurses were being made "a scapegoat" for the current financial crisis in the NHS.

She said: "International nurses have always been there for the UK in times of need. It beggars belief that they are now being made scapegoats for the current deficits crisis.

"If this proposal goes ahead I guarantee that the effects will be far-reaching and immediate. More than 150,000 nurses are due to retire in the next five to 10 years and we will not replace them all with homegrown nurses alone."

Nurses affected by the plans are those with up to 18 months' experience.

Chester-based recruiter Jane Lewis Healthcare said it stopped taking overseas nurses last year. This was because of the Overseas Nurse Programme, an initiative from the Nursing and Midwifery Council stipulating that any nurse or midwife from outside the EEA has to undertake a 20-day assessment at university before being declared fit to practice.

Nick Hodson, managing director, said: "A lot of nurses from Australia and New Zealand were put off the idea of coming to Britain because of this assessment."

But he added that, earlier this year, the firm was invited by the Department of Health to actively recruit from China. "So this new policy seems to fly in the face of that."