Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the stakeholder questions on the requirement for all relevant bodies to charge upfront for treatment, which are being asked as part of the review of the National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) (Amendment) Regulations 2017 (SI 2017/756), are designed to exclude evidence relating to the impact of charging upfront prior to those Regulations coming into force; whether the review will consider evidence submitted relating to that impact; and what assessment they have made of the extent to which it is possible for a stakeholder responding to provide evidence of the impact of the requirement to charge upfront without drawing on evidence of the impact of charging upfront before that new requirement came into effect.

The current review was initiated as a response to concerns that have been raised by stakeholders regarding the introduction of the National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) (Amendment) Regulations 2017, the ‘amendment regulations 2017’, and in line with the continuing public sector equalities duty in relation to these regulations. A document outlining the scope of the review, to consider the impact of the amendment regulations 2017, was shared with stakeholders in November 2017. The questions which have been sent to stakeholders since the sharing of the scope document have intentionally focused on asking for evidence relating to the impact of the amendment regulations 2017. This is in accordance with the rationale for the review and the review scope, which had previously been communicated to stakeholders.

The Department is aware that, given that the amendment regulation, introduced as part of the amendment regulations 2017, requiring relevant bodies to withhold treatment from chargeable overseas visitors until the estimated full cost of the service has been paid, made a legal requirement of what was previously best practice, it may be relevant to refer to the effects of upfront charging prior to the amendment regulations 2017 coming into effect. This is acknowledged in the question documents which the Department has sent to stakeholders. For example, in the question document sent to vulnerable group’s representatives, the introduction asks for stakeholders to indicate whether the evidence they present relates to the period before or after the relevant provisions of the Amendment Regulations 2017 came into force. It is also the case that if, during the course of engaging with stakeholders as part of the review the Department were to receive evidence concerning the impact of upfront charging prior to the amendment regulations 2017 coming into force the Department would, of course, consider this evidence and take any resulting action which it judged to be necessary.