Tuesday 14 June 2022 11:13 PM Newly qualified foreign GPs are being threatened 'with deportation' trends now

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Newly qualified foreign GPs are being driven out of the NHS because the Home Office is threatening to deport them, MPs have been told.

Taxpayers are spending £50,000 a year training each of the family doctors amid a major shortage – only to lose them to other countries, health leaders claim.

Dr Margaret Ikpoh, of the Royal College of GPs, told the Commons health and social care committee that some doctors were 'literally going from celebrating the fact that they've become a GP, to receiving letters threatening them with deportation'.

The NHS in England has lost the equivalent of around 2,000 full-time GPs since 2015, which is making it harder for patients to secure an appointment. The RCGP is calling for international medical graduates who qualify as GPs in the UK to be given automatic indefinite leave to remain to stem the crisis.

Sir Robert Francis QC, chairman of Healthwatch England, told MPs that over half the complaints the watchdog received about GPs were concerned with access. He added: 'Patients... certainly find it difficult to have a face-to-face appointment with a GP.'

He warned that patients were turning up at overcrowded A&Es after finding it impossible to get through to their GP surgery or NHS 111 service.