INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - FEBRUARY 2007
The Month that was ...

BRITAIN TO KEEP IN ABEYANCE IMMIGRATION RULES THAT WENT AGAINST NHS RECRUITMENT

Apparently bowing to pressure from groups campaigning for aggrieved Indian doctors, Britain has given the medicos some relief by agreeing to keep in abeyance new immigration rules that went against them for the first round of recruitment to the National Health Service.

The guidelines issued by the Health Department on its website for recruitment to training posts said: "Doctors with limited leave to enter/remain in the UK in immigration categories that allow them to work will be considered for short-listing in round 1 if their leave is current at August 1." From January 22 to February four, more than 30,000 doctors applied for the 21,000 jobs with the NHS, the biggest employer of medicos, and about 12,000 applicants are Indians. A shortlist of candidates will be released tomorrow and interviews will take place in the first week of March.

Since the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme was announced in April 2006, under which employers have to prove that they had no appropriate candidates from the UK and EU before offering jobs to non-EU candidates, an estimated 5,000 Indian doctors have returned home as their prospects of getting a job here have diminished.

British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), one of the two petitioners seeking a judicial review of the immigration guidelines applicable to non-EU doctors, today welcomed the latest decision of the health department. BAPIO had written to the department, asking it to continue to keep the new "discriminatory" rules in abeyance as it was appealing the High Court's February 9 ruling whereby it refused to quash the immigration regulations.