THE NHS is referring patients to “anyone with a scanner” as a registration loophole has given rise to a black market of migrant workers on “insidious” contracts that prevent whistle-blowing, the TUC Congress heard today.

Delegates in Brighton heard that the issue is most acute in sonography and ultrasound, with a third of England’s waiting lists now involving non-obstetric ultrasound.

These scans are classed as an advanced branch of radiography, and the NHS has only “very recently opened pathways allowing direct entry recruitment routes,” said Society of Radiographers (SoR) delegate Dean Rogers.

Its status has also meant that sonographers are not recognised or registered by the Health and Care Professions Council regulator “and where there’s a loophole some unscrupulous opportunists will look to exploit it,” he said.

“Such is the desperate need and political drive to reduce diagnostic waiting lists, the NHS establishment, hospital trusts, the GP surgeries and health boards have been referring patients to anyone with a scanner, sometimes with extraordinarily inflated prices and rarely with any accountability trail.”

SoR has now uncovered multiple examples of vulnerable women suffering ruthless exploitation after being brought into Britain, sometimes directly recruited from red list countries.

These workers earn “two-thirds or less of NHS sonographers’ pay, being expected to work in excess of the working time regulations with no overtime pay and that’s just the start,” he said.

Their contracts often include termination clauses that force them to pay training fees “they never access, visa fees the employer can’t legally seek to recover and a professional indemnity transfer on to the employee, if you resign and serve your notice you will be dismissed for spurious reasons.”

Mr Rogers urged unionised Home Office staff to prioritise protecting “vulnerable professionals caught up in these insidious contracts with a pause on visa withdrawals in whistleblowing cases and support transfers into the NHS with internationally recruited professionals.”

Delegates passed a motion calling for all NHS providers to be responsible for maintaining clear records of all work outsourcing and due diligence they’ve taken for making sure that patients are safe when they are referred outside the NHS.

They also backed SoR’s calls to close the registration loophole “without further delay.”

Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr John Puntis said: “This ‘scanners for hire’ story epitomises present government approaches to the NHS, with blind faith in the private sector, lack of oversight and inadequate appraisal of risks and benefits of particular policies. 

“The abolition of NHS England, for example, may turn out to be a costly exercise through redundancy payments eating up the putative savings promised to be ploughed back into patient care. 

“The scanning saga presented to the TUC shows the elusive goal of waiting list reduction takes precedence over critical thinking, sound finance, due regard for the workforce and the safety of patients.”