To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps his Department has taken to ensure that employment by the NHS of doctors trained in the developing world does not adversely affect health care standards in developing countries. (186891)

[holding answer 18 February 2008]: The United Kingdom was the first, and remains the only, developed country to implement and review systematic policies that explicitly prevent the targeting of developing countries in the area of international recruitment. As such, the Department published a code of practice for the ‘International Recruitment of Healthcare Professionals’ in 2001 and updated it in December 2004.

The code of practice proscribes the active recruitment of health care professionals from developing countries.