NHS risks losing GPs to ‘nonsensical’ immigration rules, Priti Patel told

Hundreds of overseas-born trainee GPs are at risk of deportation because of “nonsensical” immigration rules, the profession’s leader has warned Priti Patel.

The NHS risks losing much-needed family doctors unless visa regulations are overhauled to allow young medics to stay in Britain at the end of their GP training, Prof Martin Marshall said.

Marshall, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, has written to Patel, the home secretary, demanding that she scrap “bureaucratic” hurdles affecting would-be GPs from abroad.

He told the Guardian: “At a time when general practice is experiencing the most severe workload pressures it has ever known, it is nonsensical that the NHS is going to the expense of training hundreds of GPs each year who then face potential deportation by the Home Office because of an entirely avoidable visa issue.

“We cannot afford to lose this expertise and willingness to work in the NHS, delivering care to patients, due to red tape.”

The threat to foreign-born GP trainees has arisen because current immigration rules state that “international medical graduates” (IMGs) can be given indefinite leave to remain only after they have been in the country for five years, but GP training lasts for only three years.

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Source: The Guardian, 17 May 2022