Doctors treating NHS patients without complete ID checks
- Dignity 4Patients
- Oct 1
- 4 min read
By News Staff - The Times UK - 01.10.2025 - [Prevention] - [ENGLAND] Identification requirements to obtain a medical licence from the GMC were relaxed during the pandemic, but years later at least 341 physicians remain unverified Hundreds of doctors have been cleared to treat British patients without the General Medical Council (GMC) verifying their identity documents in person.
As part of its investigation into banned doctors practising in the UK, The Times obtained a full copy of the GMC register database.
Analysis of this database showed that as of May this year, 505 doctors with full licences to practise had not had their IDs fully verified by staff at the health regulator.
The failure is a legacy of emergency licences issued to doctors during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was temporarily made easier for doctors to register with the GMC.
Those with a UK address, sufficient qualifications, and no outstanding complaints were given temporary registration, without having to present identity documents to GMC officials in person.
However, in the five years since the pandemic commenced, the GMC has not gone back to properly verify all of these doctors.
While the GMC says the number not vetted has fallen to 341 since May, it still leaves hundreds of doctors practising without this check having been completed, presenting a potential risk to patients.
The revelation about these further due diligence shortcomings comes after The Times revealed how some doctors who had serious misconduct findings against them abroad were cleared to treat NHS patients.
These included Sujan Thyagaraj, a psychiatrist employed by a Bradford NHS trust who lost his US medical licence for having sex with a patient, and Sattar Kadhem, a radiologist who lost his Swedish and Norwegian medical licences for misreading scans.
They were among 22 doctors identified who were subject to discipline or restrictions overseas but had no record of it showing on their GMC licences.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, ordered an urgent review of vetting procedures for foreign qualified doctors in response to The Times’s findings, describing them as “horrific” and “a serious failure in our medical regulatory systems that I will not tolerate”.
Paul Whiteing, chief executive of Action Against Medical Accidents, said these missing ID checks were “a further cause for concern. At the heart of any effective registration system for doctors is a robust validation system.
“The evidence here would suggest that there are weaknesses in the validation process, which hopefully are historic. At worst, this could lead to patient safety being compromised if doctors who are not fit to practise are allowed to do so.”
Politicians across the spectrum are calling for action to close the loopholes used by these doctors to obtain medical licenses.
Dr David Bull, the Reform UK chairman, said: “Clearly these people should never have been granted a licence to practice in the UK. The GMC is very rigorous with UK graduates, so I have no idea why they have such lax vetting for foreign doctors.”
Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat health and social care spokeswoman, said: “It beggars belief that doctors who’ve been struck off are slipping through the net. To rub salt in the wounds, this scandal has happened while excellent staff are laid off across the country, and many doctors go unemployed.”
A spokesman for the Professional Standards Authority, which oversees the UK’s health regulators, said it had “serious concerns” about the findings. It was “urgently reviewing” the actions the GMC was now taking relating to specific doctors and would be monitoring what action was needed to prevent the failures being repeated.
A spokeswoman for the GMC said: “During the pandemic, we had to pause in-person ID checks to comply with UK government guidance. We continued to verify all qualifications and conduct basic ID checks so that doctors were not prevented from joining the workforce to deal with the COVID emergency.”
“Doctors were advised they would need to verify their identities once restrictions were lifted, and a note was placed on their online record to reflect this. We also flagged this to employers and emphasised the importance of verifying IDs for this group of doctors as part of their usual recruitment processes.
“Since then, we have completed outstanding ID checks for thousands of these doctors. There are now 341 doctors outstanding and we have been contacting them and their employers to urge them to complete these checks as a matter of urgency. We have been clear that we can, and will, remove their licence to practise if they fail to comply.” If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and were abused in state run medical and health facilities, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm.
Dignity4Patients Commentary: The continued presence of hundreds of doctors practising without completed identity checks is deeply concerning. While the initial relaxation of ID requirements during the pandemic was understandable, the fact that 341 doctors still haven’t fulfilled this basic verification step raises serious questions about regulatory oversight and employer diligence.
