TREATMENT OF TRAINEE DOCTORS FROM COMMONWEALTH AND FORMER COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES

Early day motion 1989, tabled 19 April 2006 by Austin Mitchell (Labour). Signed by 123 members.

That this House expresses its concern at the sudden and peremptory way the Home Office has rushed through without adequate debate inside Parliament or discussion outside it and with only perfunctory consultation with the British Medical Association, associations representing immigrant doctors and a health service heavily dependent on foreign doctors, changes in the immigration rules which will exclude non-EU trainee doctors from shortlists for jobs unless no EU or EEA applicants are available, impose a burden of costs, disruption and uncertainty on hospitals dependent on foreign house officers, as well as on the careers and prospects of foreign doctors training in the UK or hoping to come from India or Pakistan to make a career in the UK, and make nationality a more important qualification for medical and dental appointments than excellence, quality or language skills; suggests that to treat doctors from India, Pakistan and other Commonwealth countries in this fashion is insulting after their great contribution to the National Health Service; and, recognising that these sudden regulations have produced a state of alarm and fear among trainees from overseas, urges that the changes, insofar as they affect medical and dental jobs, both demanding a longer and more complex training than other jobs, be reconsidered and introduced again only after extensive discussion and modification and a substantial period of transition.

Signatures by party: Labour 54, Liberal Democrat 43, Conservative 15, DUP 4, Scottish National Party 3, Independent 1, Respect 1, Social Democratic and Labour Party 1, UUP 1.