MI5 is expected to be drafted in to help with future checks on foreigners seeking to work in the medical profession, in an attempt to prevent suspected radical extremists legitimately entering the UK.

The move is expected to follow yesterday’s announcement of a Home Office review of the recruitment of overseas staff into the NHS.

Gordon Brown announced the review as part of a number of measures aimed at ensuring further checks are carried out on the background of people seeking to enter the country.

Sponsors of immigrants coming to work in the NHS or other industries will be expected to carry out security checks.

Who are the terror suspects?

Eight suspects have been held by anti-terror police investigating the failed car bomb attacks in Glasgow and London

Multimedia

• In Pictures: UK terror attacks

BACKGROUND

• Biting back at terror suspects

• MI5 asked to check foreign medical workers

• Search for the thread linking bomb suspects

• Mobile phones may have led police to arrests

Related Links

• Bomb suspects wrote 'suicide note’

• Calculating chances after burns

The sponsors, who can include employers or academic institutions, will be asked to show details of the checks they have carried out on workers in sensitive posts. There will also be a “sponsors’ register” on which people or bodies would have to be named if they wanted to bring individuals to the UK.

Extended checks are also expected to be conducted on people coming to the UK under the points-based highly skilled migrants scheme.

Mr Brown also told MPs at Prime Minister’s Questions that existing watch lists of potential terrorists would be expanded worldwide to help other countries.

Sir Alan West, the former First Sea Lord, who is now a terrorism minister in the Home Office, will conduct the review of recruitment into the NHS. But the Home Office was unable to provide more details about how the new checks will operate, or the full scope of Sir Alan’s inquiry.

NHS Employers, which represents health trusts, said earlier this week that the NHS checked applicants’ clinical and linguistic ability rather than political or extremist affiliations and did not think that this should be changed.

The Security Service holds a huge database of individuals who have come across its path during surveillance and monitoring operations over the years. It has already been acknowledged that a number of the doctor suspects being questioned by police over the failed London and Glasgow bomb plots feature on the database as having had links to known extremists in the past.

However, security sources said that any move to incorporate MI5 into a new checks system to monitor the recruitment of foreign doctors into the NHS would have serious resource implications.

Mr Brown confirmed that a review of the admissibility of intercept evidence in court would be carried out by a cross party group of Privy Counsel-lors. He emphasised the need for cross--party cooperation on security matters and vowed to take all measures necessary for the safety of the British public.

“It is vitally important the message is sent out to the rest of the world that we will stand strong, steadfast and united in the face of terror,” he said.

“We’ll expand the watch list of potential terrorists so that we list them in such a way that authorities of different countries can be warned.

“We will expand the background checks that are being done where there are highly skilled migrant workers coming into this country. When people sponsor them, we will ask them to give us their background checks.

“Thirdly, I’ve asked Lord West, the new Terrorism Minister, to conduct an immediate review as to what arrangements we must make in relation to recruitment to the NHS.”

He said that new agreements will be signed with countries around the world to ensure a coordinated response to the terrorist threat.

Police options

Police can hold the six suspects until the weekend. Then they have to charge them, let them go or apply to a magistrate to hold them for another seven days

If they want to hold them further – up to a maximum of 28 days – they have to apply to a High Court judge

For the suspect in hospital under police guard it is not clear if police will have to release him after 28 days, even if they have not been able to question him

A British officer is due to arrive in Australia today to interrogate Mohammed Haneef, a 27-year-old Indian doctor arrested at Brisbane international airport on Monday. It was not clear if the British authorities will seek his extradition

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