Immigrants (NHS Treatment)

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The Government are not going to take any lessons in overblown rhetoric when Labour Members talked about this problem for 13 years and did absolutely nothing about it. What was missing from the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks was a proper apology for Labour’s total failure to control our borders during a period in office that saw a quadrupling of net migration. We do not know how many people are residing in this country illegally, but in January the London School of Economics published a report stating that it could be nearly 900,000 people, in which case the cost will not be a few millions but many, many times that. In 13 years, Labour did not change eligibility for access to free NHS services and did nothing to improve the collection of proper dues from people coming from outside the European Union.

The £20 million figure that the Prime Minister’s spokesman used this morning is the amount of uncollected debt that is owed to the NHS by foreign nationals. If the right hon. Gentleman had listened to my response, he would know that we believe—of course it is impossible to get exact figures on this because of the total mess that the previous Government created—that we identify less than half the people who should be paying for NHS care and collect less than half the money that should be collected.

Of course we will work with very closely with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure a co-ordinated approach. If the right hon. Gentleman had listened to what I said, he would have heard that the exemption for emergency care and for public health issues will remain in place, which is extremely important.

Let me finish by talking about A and E issues. The reality is that the LSE estimates that about 70% of those living illegally in the UK live in London, where A and Es happen to face some of the biggest pressures. University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust opened a new A and E only in the past few years and it was built for a capacity of 65,000 people a year, but it is now seeing 120,000 a year. If the right hon. Gentleman’s Government had done something about this rather than talk about it, A and Es across London would not be facing the pressure they are now facing.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State publish the names of those trusts that are abjectly failing to identify and recover charges from those who are not entitled to free care?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. Part of the problem is that when we should be identifying someone as a foreign national who should pay for their NHS care, that does not happen a lot of the time because of the incentives in the system. Under the NHS improvement initiative, which is taking place in London at present—it is worth looking at that closely, because it has a lot of promise—there is a centralised collection of debt from foreign nationals who owe the NHS so that that does not become the responsibility of individual hospitals, which is something that is putting them off registering people as eligible for their NHS care.