Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that NHS Trusts have been advised to charge residents of Channel Islands 150 per cent of the cost of specialist treatments received at English hospitals.

The United Kingdom has a residence based health care system, and entitlement to free National Health Service care is largely based on being ordinarily resident in the UK, or being otherwise exempt from charge under the NHS (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015, as amended the Charging Regulations.

A person who is not ordinarily resident in the UK (an overseas visitor) is subject to the Charging Regulations, which require providers of NHS relevant services to make and recover charges from overseas visitors unless an exemption category in the Charging Regulations applies. Since April 2015, it is a requirement when making these charges to apply a charge of 150% of the national tariff to those overseas visitors who are resident outside the European Economic Area, including those resident in the Channel Islands.