Will prioritising UK medical graduates create a damaging ‘two-tier’ system?

By Claudia Tanner

Doctors.net.uk takes a look at how the training bottleneck crisis developed and the case for and against prioritising UK medical graduates over international medical graduates, plus the unresolved questions remaining.

The government's plan to fast-track legislation prioritising UK-trained doctors for NHS jobs has sparked warnings it could create a discriminatory "two-tier system" that undervalues international medical graduates and contribute further to their growing exodus from the health service.

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who chairs the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, challenged health secretary Wes Streeting to explain how he would avoid creating unfair divisions amongst NHS doctors under the proposed reforms.

"There is an acute workforce shortage," Ms Moran told the Commons on Tuesday evening. "How in this plan and in this legislation is he going to avoid creating a two-tier system that risks undervaluing the critical work that they [international medical graduates] do to also prop up our NHS?"