The Home Office should exempt all doctors with job offers from the NHS from any cap or restriction (Source: Getty)
Monday 19 March 2018 4:07am
This is a key contributing factor to the delays in patients being treated in A&E as well as the cancellation of all non-essential operations we saw at the start of the year.
Recently, a number of doctors whom we have secured jobs for at a variety of NHS hospitals across England and Wale have had their applications for sponsorship of Tier 2 visas (for highly skilled workers) turned down by the Home Office.
We have seen this first-hand, as a recruitment agency specialising in providing permanent and fixed-term doctors to the NHS, which helps hospitals to reduce their outgoings on expensive locum doctors.
We have dealt with up to a dozen such doctors who have had their applications for a Certificate of Sponsorship (lodged by the hospital) rejected by the Home Office.
In our opinion, the current spate of visa rejections marks a worrying turn of events for a number of reasons.
Foremost, these physicians are vitally needed to start work in the NHS to care for patients and carry out urgent operations.
Second, this is the start of a new era for the NHS when it comes to international recruitment.
The NHS has a long history of hiring doctors from overseas. In the past, a large number of these physicians came from within the EU, and as such enjoyed freedom of movement rights.
With no requirement for visas or employer “sponsorship”, this meant that it was incredibly easy to recruit doctors from within the EU, provided they had the required English language skills to obtain General Medical Council registration.
However, following the Brexit vote in 2016, we as an agency have seen a sharp downturn in the number of physicians who are relocating to the UK from elsewhere in the EU.
Simultaneously, there has been an outflow of EU doctors who have left the NHS to return to their home countries or work in another EU member state.
The Home Office cap of 20,700 for Tier 2 visas will inevitably need to be adjusted based on the fact the UK is planning on leaving the EU. But in the meantime, it is vital to find a short-term fix that allows doctors the chance to come start work in the UK now.
A real frustration for the doctor, the hospital, and the recruitment agency is that the Home Office refusal comes at the end of the process.
A candidate can have been headhunted and interviewed, their salary negotiated, contracts signed, and plans made to travel, when all of a sudden a shock email comes from the Home Office advising that the candidate will not be granted the right to apply for a visa.
Often doctors will have handed in their notice, vacated property, and taken their children out of school, suddenly to be told that their future career plans are in tatters.
Another issue is that, as the number of applicants for Certificates of Sponsorship rises, the threshold for the points required to be allocated one also increases.
In the last tranche of allocations, a salary of over £55,000 was required – meaning that the number of doctors on lower salary bands, allocated as they are new to the NHS, missed out.
It is our opinion that the Home Office should exempt all doctors with job offers from the NHS from any cap or restriction. These physicians should be able to take up their posts and commence their NHS contracts immediately – at a time when they are needed more than ever.
City A.M.'s opinion pages are a place for thought-provoking views and debate. These views are not necessarily shared by City A.M.
