'Health tourists' leave our NHS with £200m black hole

Health tourists have cost the cash-strapped NHS a staggering £200million during the past five years - despite Government pledges to crack down on this abuse of the system. Hospitals across the nation are being deprived of more than £110,000 on average in vital funds every day by people not entitled to free treatments.

New figures show the cost of foreign citizens and former UK residents who benefit from our health service but fail to pay their bills has continued to soar.

Conservative MP Peter Bedford said: "I suspect the true cost of this type of health tourism is far higher and call upon the Department of Health to recoup these colossal sums of money in the interests of each and every British taxpayer."

Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said his party would "shut down the 'health tourism' scam".

He said: "Successive Conservative and Labour governments have sold out the British taxpayer. If you want to use our NHS then take out private healthcare insurance before you arrive.

"It is called the National Health Service and not the international health service for a reason."

The latest figures, obtained in a Freedom of Information Request, showed that last year the bad debt from NHS treatment given to those not entitled to it for free was £40.9million - up 12% on the figure of £36.5million the year before.

But this is believed to be just the tip of the iceberg as it only represents cases where invoices were generated and then not paid.

In many cases officials would not have issued a bill because they realised there was never any prospect of being paid.

Also, the statistics from the Department of Health do not include figures from some of the major NHS trusts in urban areas that traditionally have the biggest issues with so-called health tourism.

In 2017 NHS trusts were supposed to start charging patients upfront for the cost of their care, so that administrators didn't have the time-consuming job of chasing them for payment afterwards. Patients needing emergency care were still to be invoiced later.

Residents in the UK qualify for free NHS care. But foreign travellers to the UK and former UK residents who return home after having settled abroad do not routinely get free treatment on the NHS.

The Government said its charging scheme should net an extra £500million for the NHS but a National Audit Office report said the money raised would fall far short of that target.

The official records revealed most of the NHS trusts with the biggest outstanding debts for treatments were in London.

For the five year period Barts Health Trust is owed £40.6million, King's College Hospital Trust £15.7million and Lewisham and Greenwich Trust £11million.

The only trust on the list from outside of the capital city was University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire Trust, which was owed £5.7million.

The issue of foreign patients being unable to pay for their care was highlighted in a BBC documentary called Hospital where a Nigerian woman was treated as an emergency case at St Mary's A&E, in London, after her plane stopped at Heathrow.

The woman, only identified at Priscilla, needed care for her unborn quadruplets and by the time she was discharged her bill had reached £330,000.

In the Conservative Party's 2019 election manifesto it stated: "We will clamp down on health tourism, ensuring that those from overseas who use NHS services pay their fair share. And we will increase the NHS surcharge paid by those from overseas."

The issue was not mentioned at all in the Labour Party's Change manifesto for the 2024 General Election although it said it would create an extra 40,000 appointments every week paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-dom loopholes.

Alp Mehmet, chair of Migration Watch UK, said: "Health tourism has long been a costly problem that successive governments have shied away from.

"Ministers are fully aware of its draining effect on the NHS. Wes Streeting would do himself and the NHS a power of good by getting on top of it."

Mr Bedford, who was elected as the Tory MP for Mid Leicestershire last year, added: "This is yet another example of 'soft touch Britain' costing the hard-pressed taxpayer millions of pounds each year.

"When British people find it hard to get a medical appointment, and we see tens of millions of pounds wasted on foreign health tourism, is it any wonder that the public have so little faith in public institutions like the NHS?"

Former Conservative Brexit minister David Jones, who now supports Reform UK, said: "These figures highlight a real and ongoing problem. The NHS is a cherished national institution, but it's not a free-for-all.

"Most people would agree that those not entitled to free care should be required to pay their way. It's only fair to taxpayers.

"The Government needs to ensure that the systems in place to recover these costs are actually working - otherwise trust in the system is undermined and valuable resources are diverted from British patients who genuinely rely on them."

David Campbell Bannerman, chairman of the Freedom Association, pushed for a tough line, saying: "The NHS is under enough pressure without being bled dry by free riding health tourists. The scale of this is seriously underplayed.

"The Government needs to prioritise strong action against this, not continue to ignore the problem."

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "Just as Brits abroad have to pay for healthcare, so should visitors to this country.

"Last year, the NHS identified and recovered payments from more overseas visitors than in any previous year since records began, and the Secretary of State has made clear to NHS England that money that belongs in our hospitals must be recovered."

A NHS spokesperson said: "The NHS is committed to delivering the best possible value for taxpayers' money, and in line with regulations, providers of relevant NHS-funded services are required to identify overseas visitors accessing treatment and take all reasonable steps to recover the costs where appropriate.

"If a patient needs non-urgent care, full payment must be secured in advance of treatment being given, and only when treatment is deemed urgent or immediately necessary should it be provided without that in place."