Indian doctors win work right in UK
Posted by akpwld on April 30, 2008
It’s a big victory for Indian doctors in Britain as the House of Lords allowed them to work and train under the same conditions given to applicants from Britain and the European Union.
This will affect between 8000 and 10,000 Indians currently in the UK on HSMP visas given before April 2006.
This decision came after two long years of hectic lobbying and long courtroom hours.
In a 4-1 judgement, Britain highest judiciary dismissed the government’s appeal against an earlier court decision in favour of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), which had challenged an April 2006 order to hospital trusts to employ non-EU medicos only if no candidate from EU is available.
Dr Ramesh Mehta, President, BAPIO said, ”We think this is a landmark victory for doctors from the Indian sub-continent especially from India. We are absolutely delighted and we believe justice has been done.”
In April 2006, the Department of Health issued guidelines to hospitals not to employ anyone from outside the European Union unless there was no candidate from within the EU.
This affected thousands of Indian doctors who were in the UK on a Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP).
Last year the High Court had ruled that the guidelines were illegal after which the government moved the House of Lords.
Anthony Robinson, Solicitor, BAPIO said, ”In the High Court we were unsuccessful so we had to go to the Court of Appeal where we were successful, the three lords were unanimous and here today the House of Lords have agreed to that by 4 to 1.”
The Indian doctors under the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) were allowed to compete for jobs after the court ruling in favour of them last year, but Wednesday’s Lords ruling puts a seal of finality on their employability status.
Indian and other non-European Union doctors had found themselves in the lurch when the Department of Health, faced with a large pool of UK and EU-trained doctors, directed hospital trusts to give preference to EU doctors.
The BAPIO pointed to a recent ruling by the House of Lords and Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights, against retrospective application of the immigration rules.
”The Committee concludes that the changes to the HSMP are clearly not compatible with the right to respect for home and family life under Article 8 ECHR (European Convention of Human Rights)and contrary to basic notions of fairness,” the committee said.
The committee recommended that the changes to immigration rules in April 2006 ‘’should be amended so that the changes apply only prospectively, that is to future applicants to the HSMP, and that those already granted leave to remain under HSMP when the relevant changes took effect should be treated according to the rules which applied before those changes”.
