The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7315 p307
4 September 2004

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News summary

NHS overseas recruitment to be tightened up

Proposals to tighten up the National Health Service code of practice on recruitment of staff from overseas have been announced. A revised code will be published later this year. The aim of the code is to stop the NHS recruiting professional staff from developing countries to the detriment of health care there.
The main proposals for strengthening the existing code of practice are:

• Giving private sector employers that adopt the code access to NHS recruitment
programmes
• Extending the code to the recruitment of locum and temporary staff
• Extending the code to domestic recruitment agencies.

Health Minister John Hutton said: “These proposals strengthen the code even further, bring the private sector into line with the NHS and will ensure that NHS contracts go to those signed up to the code. We’re also proposing to close the loophole that allows NHS trusts to recruit temporary staff from developing countries and extending the code to cover even more recruitment agencies.”