Concern over vetting foreign GP’s

Patients are being left at serious risk because European law forbids checks on the skills of foreign doctors employed in the UK, according to the General Medical Council.

The GMC has told the Health Select Committee that it is prevented from testing the qualifications of European locums.

Niall Dickson, the GMC chief executive said the council has no choice but to accept skills competency certificates and qualifications “at face value”, and are not allowed to assess the language skills of foreign doctors before they come to work in the UK.

In 2004, ministers gave GPs a controversial new contract that allowed them to give up responsibility for out-of-hours care, meaning that some trusts have turned to foreign doctors to fill this gap in care provision.

The warning has been issued as the Committee continues its investigation into the death of a patient who was given a fatal overdose by a foreign doctor.

David Gray was killed by a German doctor, Daniel Ubani, who administered 10 times the normal dose of diamorphine.

Dr Ubani had flown to Britain to provide out of hours care under a contract from the local health authority.

Despite this case, health minister Mike O’Brien has said that the government cannot move to change the rules for the next two years without reprisals from the European courts.

Mr Dickson said that his organisation had written 22 letters to its German equivalent about Dr Ubani but had received no reply.

He said the extent of sharing of information between countries on doctors who had been disciplined was ‘profoundly unsatisfactory’.

Mr Dickson said: ‘Free movement of labour is fine but, in our view, patient safety trumps free movement of labour. The level of communication across Europe is unsatisfactory.

‘If you have free movement of labour, you should have free movement of information.’