International doctors are threatened with deportation after qualifying as GPs, MPs are warned

Immigration rules are threatening the supply chain of newly qualified GPs, a committee of MPs was told this week.

Giving evidence to the Health and Social Care Select Committee on 14 June, the Royal College of General Practitioners’ (RCGP) vice chair of professional development, Margaret Ikpoh, said that it was not uncommon for international medical graduates who had completed their UK general practice training to receive letters from the Home Office threatening them with deportation.

She said, “I’m contacted on a regular basis by trainees who, despite the fact that we’ve spent £50 000 [€58 000; $60 200] a year training them up—and perhaps in areas of deprivation, they’ve also been given funding through the targeted enhanced reimbursement scheme—at the end of their training they’re literally going from celebrating the fact that they’ve become a GP to receiving letters threatening them with deportation.

“That can’t be right. It has to change, and …