THE Tory-LibDem Coalition government announced yesterday that it intends to charge all ‘non-EU nationals’ who come to Britain £200 a year for access to the NHS.
‘What price xenophobia? Stigmatising foreigners accessing the NHS creates a public health risk,’ shadow public health minister Diane Abbott responded.
The charges will mainly target Asians and Africans and those from the Caribbean and South America with families in this country.
Dr Laurence Buckman, Chair of the BMA’s GP Committee, said: ‘The BMA would strongly oppose any system where GPs are required to act as UK Border Force agents and enforce immigration checks.’
Royal College of GPs chairwoman Dr Claire Gerada said: ‘My first duty is to my patient – I don’t ask where they’re from or whether they’ve got a credit card or whether they can pay.’
She added: ‘What we don’t want to do is put people at risk … not just the migrants but also us.
‘People use the NHS if they’ve got infections and we certainly don’t want to have people wandering around for fear of being charged at the GP surgery.
‘At the moment we are fairly accessible and I think it is important to keep it that way.
‘I don’t think we should be turning the GP surgery into a border agency.
‘I think we should be making sure that people who do feel that they are ill can come and access us because we certainly don’t want people who have got TB or HIV or any other infectious disease, or in fact anybody that believes themselves to be ill, to be frightened of seeing a GP for fear of being charged.’
The National Aids Trust said the proposal would ‘undermine years of work to encourage marginalised at-risk groups to access HIV testing and treatment’.
Chief executive Deborah Jack said ‘limiting access to primary care for some migrants’ would cut off ‘the only place many of them will get an HIV diagnosis – short of presenting at A&E many years after they were infected once they are very seriously ill’.
She added: ‘If they go ahead, they risk putting lives at risk and accelerating the spread of HIV in the general population.’
Announcing his plan, Health Secretary Hunt said: ‘We have been clear that we are a national health service not an international health service and I am determined to wipe out abuse in the system.’
Despite Diane Abbot’s immediate principled opposition to the plan, the Labour Party is set to back the move.
Shadow health minister Liz Kendall said: ‘We will have many questions to ask about the details when they are published but the key tests for their proposals are: can they be properly enforced and will they save more money than they cost to put in place?’
