Home Office threatens graduate foreign GPs ‘with deportation’

NEWLY qualified foreign GPs are being driven out of the NHS because the Home Office is threatening to deport them, MPs have been told.

Taxpayers are spending £50,000 a year training each of the family doctors amid a major shortage – only to lose them to other countries, health leaders claim.

Dr Margaret Ikpoh, of the Royal College of GPs, told the Commons health and social care committee that some doctors are ‘literally going from celebrating the fact that they’ve become a GP, to receiving letters threatening them with deportation’.

The NHS in England has lost the equivalent of around 2,000 full-time GPs since 2015, which is making it harder for patients to secure an appointment. The RCGP is calling for international medical graduates who qualify as GPs in the UK to be given automatic indefinite leave to remain to stem the crisis.

Sir Robert Francis QC, chairman of Healthwatch England, told MPs over half of the complaints the watchdog receives about GPs are concerned with access. He added: ‘Patients... certainly find it difficult to have a face-to-face appointment with a GP.’

Sir Robert warned patients are turning up at overcrowded A&Es after finding it impossible to get through to their GP surgery or NHS 111 service.

He said they are being ‘kept on the phone forever’, adding: ‘It is undoubtedly one of the things that leads to people going to A&E which as we know is the wrong place for almost all such people.’ Almost half of doctors who began GP training in 2021/22

‘We have to value them better’

were international medical graduates but Dr Ikpoh, vice chairman of professional development at the RCGP, said they face a ‘major financial barrier’ to maintain their visa status.

She added: ‘I am contacted on a regular basis by trainees who, despite the fact that we’ve spent £50,000 a year training them up – perhaps in areas of deprivation, at the end of their training they are literally going from celebrating the fact that they have become a GP to receiving letters threatening them with deportation.

‘That can’t be right and it has to change. We have to value them better because if we don’t we will lose them.

‘They are already going to places where they feel more valued, Canada is top of their list. It’s an easy win for us all and we have to sort it.’

Home Office rules state foreign doctors must work under the skilled worker visa scheme for at least five years before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain and this timeframe covers most specialist medical training.

But GPs usually gain their certificate of completion of training after three years, leaving a twoyear gap during which they have to secure sponsorship if they want to stay in the country when their visas run out.

Health Education England, which helps to train the health sector workforce, told Pulse magazine there were about 1,000 trainee GPs on visas which will expire by March 2023.

NHS England had expected to be allowed to sponsor the doctors during the two-year period but could not reach an agreement with the Home Office. The Home Office said it was working with the Department of Health and Social Care to try to increase the number of GP practices with licences to sponsor newly qualified trainees.

A Government spokesman accused the RCGP of ‘needless scaremongering’ for using the word ‘deportation’. They said the term is used for foreign national offenders and those whose leave expires could instead face ‘removal’.