PULSE: Recently qualified GPs are receiving deportation letters soon after completing their medical training, the professional development vice chair of the RCGP has told MPs today. 

New doctors are ‘literally going from celebrating the fact that they’ve become a GP to receiving letters threatening them with deportation’, Dr Margaret Ikpoh told the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee during an evidence session on the future of general practice.

Pulse revealed in April 2022 that up to 1,000 overseas GPs could be at risk of being deported despite completing their UK training because of complex immigration rules that mean they are unable to extend their visas.

The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) said it is ‘utterly appalled’ that newly-qualified GPs face deportation despite having completed their GP training in the UK and are left ‘in limbo’ with this threat ‘hanging over them’.

DAUK spokesperson Dr Dolin Bhagawati said: ‘This simply defies belief and demonstrates the siloed thinking that is present in Government when it comes to NHS staffing. These doctors, who worked during the pandemic, are ideally placed to help address the problems faced by a dramatically understaffed GP service currently.

‘Yet the Government’s immigration stance runs counter to alleviating this simple immigration issue. A Parliamentary Bill to give Indefinite Leave to Remain to all NHS workers that worked during the pandemic has been repeatedly kicked into the long grass. Despite being a simple measure to implement, the Government have chosen to embrace foolish bureaucratic madness rather than take measures to address a crippling NHS shortage.’

DAUK co-chair Dr Ellen Welch added: ‘We are short of thousands of GPs in the UK and desperately need these doctors to stay and work in the NHS. 

‘If the Government is serious about bolstering the workforce then they need to take immediate action to ensure these doctors are not deported and are granted indefinite leave to remain to use their skills within our crumbling health service.’

The story was also covered in the Lancet and the Morning Star

Listen to our Five Live appearance here

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NHS staff who argue the vaccine rollout has nothing to do with the lifting of lockdown restrictions “need to go on another educational course”, the Chair of the Doctors’ Association has told LBC.

Dr Jenny Vaughan made the remark to LBC’s Shelagh Fogarty after the subject of anti-lockdown protesters gathering in central London this weekend came up during their exchange.

Shelagh said: “There were some people in that rally claiming to be NHS workers [and] nurses too afraid to speak up about fears about vaccines.

She then Dr Vaughan: “What do you say to any NHS colleagues who share those views [and] who go on those marches?”

Dr Vaughan told Shelagh: “The truth is that the reason that we have been able to cautiously emerge from lockdown is that the vaccine has predominantly been delivered to over 80s and is now coming down all the other age groups and that we haven’t got the pressure on the NHS beds that we had.

“If anyone is strongly trying to argue that that’s nothing to do with the [vaccine] and they are an NHS staff [member] then they need to go on another educational course. They really do.

“The vaccine has delivered. But, in addition to that, so have people observing the lockdown.

“And that’s why we must continue to be very cautious with easing the lockdown. We absolutely must observe the social distancing and all the rules.”

“The NHS could not function without its foreign born workers. Around 169,000 people, or 13% of the workforce was born outside of the UK.”

Radio 4 interviewed DAUK’s Dr Pushpo Hossain on NHS Overseas Workers Day last Friday:

Would you like to continue working in the nhs?

“I really love working for the NHS and I would like to call it my home. But unfortunately it is our fate as an international health care worker, we are on temporary visas and cannot obtain permanent residency…we have to be on temporary visas for five years before we can apply for the Indefinite Leave to Remain, which also comes with an exuberant fee of around £3000 per applicant.”

Will your salary be affected by this proposed 1% pay increase? 

“To be honest, it feels very, very insulting…for some of us [the 1% pay increase does not even cover] the £3000 that is required for the Indefinite Leave to Remain application. So how are we being recognized? How is this being fair to all these international health care workers…we have put our lives on the line and is this how they want to reward us?”

In response to Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s statement regarding his unlawful management of PPE during the pandemic: ‘I won’t apologise because to apologise would imply that I’d do something differently’ DAUK’s Dr Katie Sanderson spoke out:

This is a pandemic not an election

How are we going to learn from this if we can’t be honest about what happened? It’s grossly offensive to the families of healthcare workers who got COVID and died, and I think it should be retracted immediately. 

Can you imagine what it feels like if you are the son or daughter of a doctor who died after getting COVID at work to hear that?

Dr Katie Sanderson – LBC Radio

38% of doctors who should have had FFP3 masks were saying they didn’t have them
47% saying they did not have access to long sleeved gowns 
>20% didn’t have eye protection
>60% had not been fit tested, so even if they had an FFP3 mask, it may not be protecting them because it may not have fitted 

“Just getting up for my night shift that I’ve had to pick up because two of our colleagues have come down with COVID and so now there is a rota gap.”

“I caught COVID in the first wave and I followed all the COVID PPE guidelines, you know, all the PPE that I had couldn’t stop me from getting COVID. I felt really sad and scared for the people who were saying that they did not have PPE because it’s just such a terrible disease. It’s very scary.”

Dr Pushpo Hossain

“This is the story of the UK government’s desperate 12 billion pound scramble to kit out the NHS for COVID. And the tens of millions of items of PPE bought at taxpayers expense that now can’t be used as planned. It’s pretty devastating for those who work on the front line and know so much money is being wasted when it could have been invested in our frontline services.”

“None of this is normal in the NHS. At our trust, we have three times the level of ICU patients that we had at the same time last year. We have converted several floors of our hospital to intensive care. We have redeployed multiple members of staff consultants…people from all specialties have been redeployed in the roles that they don’t normally fulfil”

“There is an immediate, short, medium and long term consequence that needs to be looked at. The immediate term consequence is our ridiculously high numbers of coronavirus cases that’s going on at the moment. Our short term goal is vaccination to try and drive that down…and our long term is to deal with our ballooning waiting lists and our mental health crisis”.

He also went on to respond to comments made by a senior MP earlier this week:

“This is basically a crisis situation…I would hope that an elected member of parliament who has people dying in his constituency would help to acknowledge that””It is not an admission of defeat to accept that one was wrong in making comments in the past…that is something which is difficult to do in politics, but unfortunately it is necessary to do in health. Otherwise we don’t learn from our mistakes. And if we do not learn from our mistakes in a pandemic situation, people die.”