AS East Lancashire today greets twelve Spanish nurses recruited together with 51 others to work in North West hospitals, the step is hailed as a departure for the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS Trust -- in that it is the first time that it has looked abroad to ease its staffing problems.

But while this may be so, it is, of course, no new thing for the NHS to offer jobs to people from overseas -- for decades it has been a host to thousands of doctors and nurses from other countries, without whom the service might well have seriously suffered.

It is true that many, and probably most, came to acquire skills and qualifications while working in our health service. And it is an irony that one of the reasons the NHS is currently having to actively recruit overseas is that many British nurses have themselves found work in other countries where their NHS training has a high reputation.

But if there is a distinction in the pilot scheme that brings Spanish nurses to the North West on two-year stints that health bosses want to to become permanent, it is that they are not trainees, but are already fully-qualified.

Yet, in essence, health chiefs are only doing the same as those other countries which have long sought the skills of trained British nurses. And they are right to reverse the flow, particularly when the expertise of these Spanish nurses is under-used in their own country because it presently has a surplus of medical staff while, in certain areas, the NHS has shortages.

Their place of origin is immaterial -- and, indeed, their coming here is wholly in keeping with EU principles permitting and encouraging the freedom of movement of job-seekers among member states. The only criterion must be that their skills and qualifications match those of British-trained nurses.

We are assured that they do and that all are also capable in spoken and written English. With those standards met, they are indeed welcome and we will be glad to welcome more wherever they are needed.