NHS: Charitable Donations

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

That is precisely the point. Any of us who have spent time in hospital will know that those charities are well advertised. As I say, they have £400 million of income, which I think makes them second only to cancer research in terms of income for health charities. I agree that they are a real asset to our health system.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, because he talked about the National Health Service being a right but also said that we have individual responsibilities. Is it not time to put much greater scrutiny on the issues of not only missed appointments but the abuse of health tourism and the Friday night nightmares of people who turn up at A&E not sick but overindulged, and expect the taxpayer to help them out?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

My noble friend is quite right—we of course have a responsibility to use this precious resource responsibly. On health tourism, we have introduced a number of changes to recoup the amount of money spent on non-UK citizens who have not contributed to the tax system. We have made good progress on that. I take his point on alcohol, which we are dealing with in a couple of ways. One is obviously by taxing alcohol through the tax system but we also have to do much more preventive work so that people drink less.