Wes Streeting has launched an attack on the NHS' reliance on its foreign workforce, arguing that it is too ready to pull "the immigration lever".
The Health Secretary has promised to support "home-grown talent" after recent data showed that medics who have trained abroad are arriving in the UK at a record rate.
Around two thirds of the 28,564 doctors who registered to practice medicine in the UK received their medical qualification abroad, The Telegraph has reported.
The number of doctors arriving from the European Economic Area (EEA) has stayed consistently around 2,500 since 2016, while rates from the rest of the world have sky-rocketed to 400 per cent during the same timeframe.
Streeting said that the health service was 'stronger' for pulling 'talent from around the world'
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"The NHS has always drawn on talent from around the world. The service is stronger for it, and millions of patients are grateful for the skilled and compassionate care they have received from staff from overseas," Streeting told The Telegraph.
"But there is no doubt that, in recent years, the NHS has become too reliant on pulling the immigration lever. It has been forced to recruit from countries on the WHO red list, which have severe shortages of their own.
"At the same time, straight A students in this country have been locked out of medical school due to cuts to places," he added.
He insisted that Labour was committed to "growing our own home-grown talent, and giving opportunities to more people across the country to join our NHS".
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The Health Secretary's latest criticism of the health service has followed his earlier attack on the NHS this week on Tuesday, targeting "really daft things being done in the name of equality, diversity and inclusion" - referring to a job which included an "anti-whiteness" stance.
From outside of Europe, the number of doctors coming to the UK for work has risen year on year since 2016, from 3,431 nine years ago to 16,913 last year.
Most of those outside of the EEA came to Britain from low-income countries, such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Egypt.
During the same period, the number of UK-trained doctors on the register increased from 7,180 to 9,285, meaning that the proportion of British-trained doctors being added to the General Medical Council's register each year has dropped from 56.2 per cent to 32.5 per cent.
Medics from the European Economic Area are not required to sit any more tests to join the Council's register and practice medicine in Britain
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Medics from the EEA are not required to sit any more tests to join the Council's register and practice medicine in Britain.
Those outside of the EEA must pass a two-part exam if they do not hold a pre-approved postgraduate qualification or are sponsored by either a Royal College or the NHS to take on a fellowship.
The first step of the exam is a multiple choice question-style test, with the second step making the students practice clinical scenarios on 'fake' patients.
Still, one former NHS consultant has said that these assessments are "not fit for purpose" and are responsible for creating a "two-tier system" of standards.
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