Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 30 April 2025 to Question 49532 on NHS Low Income Scheme: Asylum, what the cost to the public purse has been of providing HC2 certificates to people seeking asylum since 5 July 2024.

The information is not held in the format requested. HC2 certificates are generic and do not have categories such as student or asylum seeker attributed to them. The NHS Business Services Authority does not collect information on what category a patient using the HC2 belongs to for any of the National Health Service charges covered by the scheme. Therefore, it is not possible to calculate the cost to the public purse in terms of lost NHS charge revenue.