Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of reducing restrictions on recruitment to enable NHS Trusts to recruit more British doctors trained abroad.

No assessment has been made. British doctors who obtained their medical degree abroad need to meet the requirements of the General Medical Council, the independent professional regulator of the medical profession, to practise medicine in the United Kingdom.

British doctors who have obtained a medical degree abroad are then able to apply for jobs in the National Health Service on the same basis as UK medical graduates.