Departmental Recruitment

Mr. Hoban
To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the policy of British jobs for British workers will affect his Department's recruitment policy for junior doctors.

Ann Keen
The choice facing us and the medical profession is whether we accept international medical graduates displacing large numbers of United Kingdom graduates, preventing them from obtaining postgraduate training, or whether we maximise the opportunities for UK medical graduates and the taxpayers' investment in them.

Our preference is to give priority to UK and European economic area medical graduates. We were disappointed with the Court of Appeal judgment which ruled that the Department's guidance which had this effect was unlawful.

We have been given expedited leave to appeal to the House of Lords against the Appeal Court judgment. The House of Lords will hear our appeal on 28 February and we continue to examine ways to prioritise specialty training places for UK graduates.