Oral Answers to Questions

David T C Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

The Government are taking the matter extremely seriously, and they have it under active review. Up-to-date medical guidance has been cascaded to the NHS in England. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the UK is at the forefront of some of the world’s response. We are a major funder of the World Health Organisation. We have got people on the ground helping in Brazil, in particular. I assure him that we are maintaining close links with the devolved Administrations at official level, and I am always happy to speak to colleagues. We take very seriously keeping those links live.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

T9. Has the Secretary of State seen the comments of Professor Angus Dalgleish, who is widely reported in the papers today as suggesting that EU rules are forcing us to spend billions of pounds treating health tourists and preventing us from undertaking important clinical trials? Has the Secretary of State made any assessment of Professor Dalgleish’s comments?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

The Government have made a huge and significant assessment of the cost of overseas people using the NHS, and we think that there are £500 million of recoverable costs that we do not currently recover. When it comes to the EU, the biggest problem that we have is that we are able to reclaim the costs of people temporarily visiting the UK, but we do not do so as much as we should because the systems in hospitals are not as efficient as they need to be. We are sorting that out.