Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Patel and Lord Avebury

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, after Monday’s debate, I do not think this should take very long. Amendment 58 relates to Clause 33, on immigration health charges, and specifically to subsection (3)(b), which says:

“An order under this section may in particular … specify the amount of any charge (and different amounts may be specified for different purposes)”.

My amendment would remove the words in brackets. As I understand it, we already have the defined charges of £150 for students and £200 for other immigrants.

In the debate we had on Monday, I asked the Minister:

“Once that levy has been paid, it will allow them”—

we were speaking about students—

“to access all health services. Is that quite clear?”.

The answer the Minister gave was:

“Yes, that is exactly right. They will have the same access to health services as is available to a permanent resident”.—[Official Report, 10/3/14; col. 1573.]

Later in our discussions I said:

“As I understood it, I thought he said that once the health surcharge—let us say it is £200—is paid, for the duration of their legitimate stay in this country all health services will be available to them”.

In his reply, the Minister corrected me. He said:

“It is a per annum charge, so if they are here for three years and are not a student it will be three times £200”.

I accept that. But he went on to say:

“But yes, that is exactly right”.—[Official Report, 10/3/14; col. 1574.]

That is, there will be no further charges and all health services will be available to whoever has paid the levy or the health service charge—students or other immigrants.

In that case, I do not know why there is a need to have the words,

“and different amounts may be specified for different purposes”.

We need to know what these purposes are and whether there will be extra charges. If there are, what will they be for, and what will be the tariff? That is my amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, when we discussed this previously, I, too, asked my noble friend the Minister about the relationship of this provision to Clause 33(4), which says that,

“the Secretary of State must … have regard to the range of health services that are likely to be available free of charge to persons who have been given immigration permission”.

I said that that implied that certain services provided by the health service were not going to be free of charge to these people. My noble friend tried to reassure me on this point but it is there in the Bill. It seems inconsistent with the repeated declarations that were made by my noble friend the Minister—which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has just quoted—that once you have paid this levy, you are free to access all health services provided by the NHS. If that is the case, Clause 33(4) should be deleted from the Bill.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Patel and Lord Avebury

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and in so doing I remind the House of my interest as chief executive of Breast Cancer Campaign. In particular I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on pursuing his amendment and on articulating so clearly the concerns of cancer patients. I also congratulate Macmillan on the work that it has been doing very determinedly to raise these important issues on behalf of cancer patients, and I thank the Minister for listening and for being very careful in his response, as I am sure he will be.

I do not want to repeat the arguments that have already been made in this House on Report, but I would like to be very clear that I believe this House has made its intention very clear—with an alternative amendment—on the need to provide cancer patients with the security of having treatment without the pressure of potentially losing their benefit added to it, an issue that I suggested here today and that I would like to hear from the Minister on.

I would specifically welcome hearing from the Minister about the position of cancer patients who, by April 2012, will have been in the work-related activity group for 12 months. Will he clarify for us, in the light of his new thinking, whether this group of patients will no longer be eligible to receive contributory ESA? I know that the Government are consulting, and I understand that the Minister will not want to pre-empt the outcome of that consultation, but it would be very helpful for those who have received notice that their benefit will come to an end after 12 months to know, as cancer patients, what their position might be.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly and question the noble Lord, Lord Patel, about the breadth of his amendment. He spoke about those people who are receiving treatment for cancer and described vividly the ordeals that they go through when receiving chemotherapy. Of course, we all have knowledge of that kind of treatment, not from personal experience but from our relatives and friends who have been through those procedures. But not every cancer patient has to be given chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Some cancers can be treated with medication. I was speaking particularly about myeloproliferative disorders, which can be treated in the early stages with medication.

The wording of the amendment as regards “receiving treatment” is too broad and should be confined, for example, to those receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy. In that way, the provision would be limited to those people who are so physically affected by the treatment that they are receiving that they would be incapable of working or unlikely to be capable of working until that treatment ceases.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, it is true that some cancer patients may not need any treatment after surgery. But many others need therapy and my amendment refers particularly to those who cannot work because of their treatment or their suffering from the effects of the treatment. My key point is that those people want to work. As Jenni Russell said in her article, they are not skiving. They want to work. If the amendment is defective in that area, the purpose is not.