July 05, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 19, 1428

LONDON, July 4: Background security checks on foreign doctors and other health workers migrating to Britain are to be stepped up after the weekend bomb scares in London and Glasgow.

According to the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, recruitment of overseas medical staff will also be reviewed and the worldwide watch lists for terrorists expanded.

New agreements are being sought with countries around the world to ensure a co-ordinated response to the terrorist threat.

Gordon Brown announced the moves in the Commons as police continued to question eight suspects, all of whom worked in the NHS. “It is vitally important that the message is sent out to the rest of the world that we will stand strong, steadfast and united in the face of terror,” he said.

The prime minister, during his first Question Time in the Commons, said the government would strengthen background checks on highly skilled migrants.

Nearly 90,000 doctors in the UK qualified overseas at a time when domestically-trained medics are finding it hard to get jobs.

They are recruited under a programme that pays little attention to their political background.

Foreign doctors who qualify from outside the Eropean Union have to pass a series of rigorous linguistic and clinical tests before they can register with the General Medical Council.

Employers can obtain a “certificate of good standing” from a candidate's country of origin, but this is not a legal obligation.

Mr Brown’s statement suggests there will be tighter security checks as well before work visas are granted. One of the doctors under arrest is an Iraqi who was described by a university friend as a religious fundamentalist.

According to the Times on Wednesday nearly four in 10 doctors registered to work in the UK (they are not necessarily all working here) qualified overseas, in 150 countries from as far as Ecuador and Ethiopia, Somalia and Singapore.

By far the highest number are the 27,558 who qualified in India, and the list includes 6,634 who qualified in Pakistan, 2,581 in Egypt, 1,985 in Iraq, 819 in Bangladesh, 488 in Iran, 155 in Malaysia, 64 in Afghanistan and even 5 in Indonesia.

Among the nurses and midwives newly registered in 2005-06, a quarter were from outside the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area. Britain has nurses from India and Nigeria, the Philippines and Botswana, Pakistan and Ghana.