Draft Immigration (Health Charge) (Amendment) Order 2016

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 General Committees

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey.

As the Minister outlined, this order amends the 2015 order. The Opposition did not oppose the 2015 order and we do not oppose this amendment to it, but I would like to raise a number of issues. First, the Minister has given us the anticipated revenue figure of £41 million. Will he update us on how much has been raised so far from the changes made under the 2015 order? Last year he said he would publish the revenue details after the first year of implementation. Is that still the intention?

Secondly, the Minister outlined how the short-term arrangements with Australia and New Zealand will work, but the amendment obviously affects the long-term arrangements. Is there any possibility of reciprocal charges being levied by the Australian and New Zealand Governments on UK citizens living there and, if so, what will those arrangements be?

Finally, the per annum cost to the NHS of non-EU citizens is said to be £950 million, which I think is what drove the original order and what drives, to some extent, this amendment. The aim of the policy is to ensure that people make a fair contribution to the costs—we agree with that in principle—but many of these people come here to work and thus pay tax and national insurance. Does the Minister know the proportion of people paying the levy who are, in fact, in work and are therefore making the contribution to the NHS through their taxes? Can he tell the Committee what the net cost is, once taxes are taken into account, of those people’s use of the NHS? I appreciate that he might want to get back to me on that in detail.