Click to play videoNew Delhi: Eight thousand Indian origin doctors in Britain won a landmark case in the House of Lords on Wednesday.
The Lords ruled that they could not be discriminated against in recruitment to the National Health Service. With four judges in favour and one against, the Lords Committee dismissed a government appeal that would have given preference to doctors from the European Union.
The judges said it was wrong for the Department of Health to discriminate against non-European doctors.
The ruling came as a big relief for Indian origin doctors who came to the UK under the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP).
The Lords Committee also awarded costs to British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), which spearheaded the legal battle against government's attempt to retrospectively introduce regulations to restrict non-EU doctors already in the UK from applying for training posts in the state-aided National Health Service.
Vice-Chairman of BAPIO Dr Satheesh Mathew told CNN-IBN that now all the doctors have to abide by this rule. “This is a landmark decision because it will now help all doctors in fighting for their rights.”
Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Lord Carswell, Lord Mance dismissed the appeal while Lord Scott of Foscote upheld the government decision.
Soon after the judgement was delivered in the Lords Chamber of the House of Lords, an elated President of the BAPIO, Dr Ramesh Mehta, told PTI, “This is a landmark victory. We expected the Health Department would now treat non-EU overseas doctors fairly and equally on the basis of merit in the case of recruitment to the NHS."
An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 international medical graduates, a majority of them from India, would benefit from the judgement, he said.
Thousands of international doctors have already left the UK after suffering a traumatic experience.
"The House of Lords has vindicated our position that the Government had acted in haste and prematurely without thinking about the damaging consequences for thousands of international medical graduates," Mehta said.
(With inputs from PTI)
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