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Historic win for Indian doctors

Hasan Suroor

Lords reject government move to push through new rules against non-EU doctors

LONDON: A last-ditch attempt by the British government to push through new rules that would have discriminated against thousands of overseas doctors from outside the European Union collapsed on Wednesday when the House of Lords rejected its appeal against a court ruling in their favour.

It ruled that the new regime was unfair as it dashed the “legitimate expectations” of foreign doctors.

For more than 10,000 postgraduate Indian medical students and junior doctors, who would have been affected by the rules introduced in April 2006, the Lords’ judgment marked the end of a hard-fought legal battle led by the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO).

The ruling was particularly embarrassing to the government as it had insisted on approaching the House of Lords directly despite being refused leave to appeal by the Appeals Court last October when it ruled in favour of the doctors.

It came barely three weeks after the government suffered a setback in the High Court in its bid to alter rules for the Highly-Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP), involving some 30,000 Indian workers.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We are disappointed that the Lords have ruled that our guidance [in relation to new rules] as it stood was unlawful.”

BAPIO’s president Ramesh Mehta said the ruling “vindicated” its position that the government had acted “without thinking through the damaging consequences” of its policy.

The controversy, which made headlines around the world, related to the government’s bid to apply retrospectively new rules barring hospitals from employing or offering training posts to non-EU doctors unless they were able to demonstrate that no suitable U.K. or E.U. candidate was available.

Some 16,000 doctors — mostly from Asia and Africa — who came to Britain under the old rules, which allowed them to train and work in government hospitals without needing work permit, suddenly found themselves stranded.

Many out-of-work Indian doctors with no means to support themselves took to queuing at local temples and gurdwaras for free food. Some doctors were driven to taking their own lives.

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