Foreign Doctors & Terrorism.

Our new and improved Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that foreign doctors coming to Britain will be subject to more rigorous screening in future, which is a sensible step as far as it goes. However perhaps they ought to examine whether previous security screenings were left in a poor state for the sake of political point scoring. Throughout the tenure of Tony Blair the government repeatedly smeared anybody who suggested that any form of scrutiny should occur when it came to medical staff. One man in particular whose job ought to be under threat is John Hutton who as health minister launched a huge initiative to recruit foreign doctors, supposedly from developed countries which turns out to be places like Iraq & Jordan. Not only was the net cast seemingly haphazardly but Hutton was enthusiastically denouncing anyone who wanted the minimum standards from these new recruits of, you guessed it, racism.

Admittedly no one as far as I'm aware was suggesting security screening, but if even the polite suggestion that they should be able to speak English was enough for the government in connivance with its media allies such as the BBC, to try and have someone treated as though they had just signed up for the Klan, then it is pretty obvious why an intellectual atmosphere had been created where serious scrutiny was simply not tolerated. Seriously can you imagine what would have happened to a civil servant at either the Health or the Home departments who dared suggest that foreign doctors needed to be assessed as security risks?

Update: Did I suggest that no one had warned the government of lax vetting procedures? Turns out Migration Watch warned them of this two years ago.