Indian doctors win landmark legal battle in UK

Indian doctors on Wednesday won a landmark legal battle against the British government when the House of Lords ruled that the state "was wrong" in issuing guidelines discriminating against overseas graduates, mostly Indians, for employment in its health services.

In a 4-1 judgment, Britain's highest judiciary dismissed the government's appeal against an earlier court decision in favour of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin which had challenged an April 2006 order to hospital trusts to employ non-European Union medicos only if no candidate from EU is available.

"The Department of Health was wrong in issuing guidelines in April 2006 discriminating against overseas graduates," the House of Lords ruled.

The BAPIO, which had challenged the 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, said the ruling had 'vindicated' their position that the government had acted in haste.

"The House of Lords has vindicated our position that the government had acted in haste and prematurely without thinking through the damaging consequences for thousands of international medical graduates," Ramesh Mehta, president of BAPIO, said.

About 7000 to 8000 international medical graduates, mostly Indians, will benefit  from this landmark judgment.

"We expect the government would now treat the overseas doctors, particularly Indians, fairly and equally on the basis of merit in NHS jobs," Mehta said.

The Indian doctors under the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme were allowed to compete for jobs after the court ruling in favour of them last year, but Wednesday's Lords ruling puts a seal of finality on their employability status.

Indian and other non-EU doctors had found themselves in the lurch when the department of health, faced with a large pool of UK and EU-trained doctors, directed hospital trusts to give preference to EU doctors.

BAPIO had argued during a recent hearing that it agreed with the department's argument about a surplus in UK- and EU-trained doctors, but the guidance should not be applied retrospectively.

BAPIO pointed to a recent ruling by the House of Lords and Commons joint committee on human rights, against retrospective application of the immigration rules.

"The committee concludes that the changes to the HSMP are clearly not compatible with the right to respect for home and family life under Article 8 of the ECHR (European Convention of Human Rights) and contrary to basic notions of fairness," the committee said.

The committee recommended that the changes to immigration rules in April 2006 "should be amended so that the changes apply only prospectively, that is to future applicants to the HSMP, and that those already granted leave to remain under HSMP when the relevant changes took effect should be treated according to the rules which applied before those changes".