Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Tonge and Lord Avebury

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, I should like to add a few words to what my noble friend Lady Barker has already said about Amendment 64A which, unlike some of the other amendments in the group, covers postnatal as well as prenatal treatment.

We had a meeting with representatives of the Royal College of Midwives, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, and Maternity Action on 27 January and we have taken note of the strong arguments for exempting these patients from charging, as I hope the Minister will have done by the end of this debate. As has been said repeatedly, there is no official estimate of the net cost to the NHS of non-EEA short-term migrants needing maternity treatment once those exempt from charging are removed from the equation. Neither in the Government’s briefing nor in any other source have I been able to find a reliable estimate of the volume of alleged maternity tourism. However, as has been said, anecdotal evidence exists, of which the Minister’s letter is an example.

This all seems to have arisen from an assertion by Sky News that 300 women had been stopped at Gatwick but then had to be admitted because they were assessed as being more than 36 weeks pregnant and therefore unable to travel back to their countries of origin. This information was said to have come from a government report, but no title or reference was given. The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, quoted the letter from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, giving a wide range of estimates of the volume of health tourism generally but not maternity tourism in particular. All it had to say on that subject was that maternity tourism formed a large proportion of the total value of health tourism. Surely the answer to that problem is for the Government to stipulate that airlines flying pregnant women to UK destinations should be required to obtain certificates of the length of pregnancy from doctors they can trust, and for carriers that bring women who are more than 36 weeks pregnant to the UK to be subject to fines. That should not be too difficult because the alleged maternity tourists are said to come from a limited number of destinations. When my noble friend the Minister comes to reply, I would like him to make some comments about that idea.

At the other end of the spectrum from the Sky News report was an article about a woman whose case was reported in the Guardian. She had been living in the UK as the wife of a British citizen for seven years, but for some reason not explained in the article had evidently not obtained indefinite leave to remain. Having paid Lewisham Hospital £5,000 for maternity services in regard to care during and after her first child’s birth, she was terrified of going near the NHS and was expecting to give birth without medical supervision because she and her husband were still paying off the bill for the first child.

My noble friend Lady Tonge asked about the denial of treatment for women who present themselves as maternity patients but cannot satisfy the health authorities that they are legitimately entitled to those services. Surely the answer to that must be that the delivery of the services should come first and the ascertainment of the woman’s right to treatment dealt with afterwards. I cannot imagine that any clinician would say that they would not provide maternity services for a woman in the early stages of pregnancy, and that may be the answer to those who say that complications arising from a variety of serious causes might result from the failure to treat those who are in the early stages of pregnancy. I hope that I am right in saying that this will not happen because of the first duty of clinicians, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, to treat patients who come before them.

[Baroness Tonge]

Will the noble Lord give way? I appreciate his point, but if someone gives a patient the benefit of the doubt for antenatal care and it then turns out that they do not have an entitlement to treatment, do they then say that the patient is not going to get any more antenatal care?

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, it has been the case in the past that people who receive services to which they were not entitled incur a debt. I believe that something like two-thirds of the charges levied on these people lie on the table because they cannot be recovered.

[Baroness Tonge]

As I am sure my noble friend is aware, pregnancy goes on for nine months. It is not a short intervention which is treated and the patient then goes away; it is an ongoing thing that includes postnatal care and goes on for a long time, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, pointed out. This is a long-term treatment and it is important that it should be so. Perish the thought that treatment is cut off mid way.

[Lord Avebury]

No, what I was saying is that I hope that the treatment would be given irrespective of the woman’s entitlement while checks are being made to see whether she is a valid patient of the NHS or is someone who should incur the charges. However, if the charges do fall on the woman, I hope that they will simply lie on the table, as obviously a substantial proportion of the costs of treatment of migrants has done in the past. From the official figures given by the Department of Health, I think it was two-thirds of the charges incurred—not just by pregnant women but by persons who were not entitled to treatment presenting themselves to the NHS. In no case that I have heard of were patients denied treatment, but the charges piled up and the debt was left there on the table. I do not know what the mechanisms for recovery will be under this system, and perhaps the Minister will deal with that point in his reply.

I assume, and want confirmation, that no woman would ever be denied treatment, but if it was ascertained subsequently that she was not entitled to it, the debt would be recorded somewhere. Whatever steps the NHS might take to recover it would be fair enough, but if it could not be recovered, like so many other debts which have been incurred by migrants generally in the past, would it be written off to the NHS? I would like reassurance from the Minister on that point.

Undocumented migrants such as overstayers and failed asylum seekers, of whom there are estimated to be half a million, are unlikely to be able to pay for maternity or indeed any other medical services. If such people work, they are on or below the minimum wage and are now likely to become unemployed with the tightening up of checks by employers on their right to work. Health authorities may invoice patients from this group, but can the Minister say what proportion of the debt is recovered and whether there is anything in this clause, or indeed in the Bill as a whole, that will make it easier to collect the money? Will they be able to transfer the debts at a discount to a debt collector, and will they be any better off than they would have been in the past before this clause was enacted?