A crackdown on hospitals luring staff from Third world countries may fail, nurses leaders warned last week.

Higher pay is tempting nurses from Aids-stricken African countries despite a supposed ban. Some nurses are hired by private hospitals, which do not follow the NHS policy of not taking staff from developing countries.

Once in the UK the nurses can then be recruited by agencies looking for staff to transfer to the NHS.

Now the Government is expected to suggest private hospitals sign up for a voluntary code which covers 150 poor countries. In return they will be offered access to the Government’s “international recruitment programme”, a Department of Health source told The Observer.

But the Royal College of Nursing says it doubts this code would work.

A spokeswoman said: “ It is really difficult to see how far it will go, how attractive it will be, whether it will make a difference and whether it will close the loophole. We don’t even know what the Government’s International recruitment programme is.”