Visas: Health Insurance

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My noble friend is tempting me to elaborate a policy into a direction in which the Government have no intention of moving at the present time. There is a review of health service charges going on. Currently the recovery of health service charges is a problem. The health service is not getting the income that it should be getting from health service charges, but my noble friend is right to say that the merit of this scheme covering temporary migrants is that it makes a significant contribution and is very simple to administer.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that an inquiry is taking place at the moment under the auspices of the Science and Technology Committee to look at the dramatic drop in the number of overseas students engaged in science, technology and engineering subjects, and that one factor that has become quite clearly significant is the intimidatory character of the application of immigration rules, in particular this latest suggestion that there will have to be, over and above a very sizeable visa charge, a charge for health? This is having a deleterious effect on the number of PhD students, whom we desperately need in our institutions and who will make a continuing contribution to the British economy. It is a highly unsatisfactory way of trying to control inflation by imposing unnecessary and, as I say, intimidatory charges on a group of very attractive immigrants for Britain.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

We have missed the noble Lord from our debates on these issues on the Immigration Bill. I assure him that the points he is making have been well made but the Government are quite clear that this does not put us in an uncompetitive position. Even the basic health insurance for a student going to Harvard is $958 and he might expect to pay $2,190 a year more if he wants full health cover. In Australia the annual payment would be £300; in New Zealand £325; in Canada £300. The actual cost of students in this respect is estimated by the Department of Health at £700 a year. This is not putting us at a disadvantage in the world market. We have the most excellent institutions here and I wish people would stop talking down our attractiveness as a place to study.