Justice for Overseas Doctors

Friends

An overseas doctor in UK who has been battling for over 10 years to establish that the Department of Health followed a racially discriminatory policy against overseas doctors now seeks your support.

In 1987 Raj Chaudhary was a young, bright, ambitious doctor from India who came to England to train as a surgeon. He had Masters in Surgery from Delhi and obtained FRCS from Edinburgh and London soon after arriving. Having done two years’ training as surgical registrar and having obtained Urology diploma from University College London he got through open competition into a registrar post in Urology. The post was in Manchester and was of 3-years duration. After a brief stint in research he then took up a locum senior registrar position.

Then came the Calman reforms in training.

Raj fulfilled all eligibility condition to enter the new Specialist Registrar training. But the Postgraduate Dean refused to recognise his Manchester training. To his disbelief the British Medical Association of which he was a member declined to help. He sued the BMA for race discrimination.

In 2002, an Employment Tribunal ordered the BMA to pay £814,877 to Raj Chaudhary. The BMA appealed. The Appeal Tribunal upheld the Employment Tribunal's finding. BMA then went to the Court of Appeal.

Meanwhile Raj had also taken the Dean to Employment Tribunal. During the Tribunal proceedings, the Secretary of State for Health stepped in for the Dean and offered Raj £500,000 to settle the case.

Raj insisted that the Secretary of State acknowledge that there had been a breach of the promise that all “registrar training would be comparable” and as a result overseas doctors like him had suffered. The Secretary of State refused to accept this and consequently, Raj declined the offer.

The Tribunal hearing proceeded and while the Tribunal accepted that there had been a promise that ‘all registrar training would be comparable’, quite inexplicably, based on oral evidence of a civil servant, the Employment Tribunal ruled against Raj.

The Court of Appeal

The Court of Appeal handed down a decision on the 27th of July. It ruled against Raj in the appeal against the Secretary of State. At the same time, the court ruled in favour of the BMA and withdrew the compensation award made to Raj. The court has refused permission to appeal to the House of Lords.

Details of the case can be seen on Raj’s website www.chaudhary.uni.cc.

Friends, the breach of the promise of comparable training and the unfair implementation of new regulations at the time of change in the training regime affected a whole generation of Asian and other overseas doctors. Careers of hundreds were ruined. Many had to opt for SAS posts. Raj has carried on fighting single-handedly for the recognition of this injustice.