Health Bill [HL]

I will not detain the Committee much longer, because I, too, have heard similar evidence as a member of the Independent Asylum Commission last year: evidence of unfair treatment of destitute asylum seekers urgently requiring healthcare and being turned away. We reported this in our interim findings, and again in our third report, Deserving Dignity. To take HIV/AIDS as an example, we have had submissions from the National AIDS Trust, the Terrence Higgins Trust, the Refugee Council and the George House Trust. They basically said that it was a disgrace that refused asylum seekers are unable to access hospital care when the cost of caring, say, for a destitute mother with HIV/AIDS is so much greater than the initial treatment. We have heard examples—I will not repeat them—of excessive charges for, for example, maternity care. Citizens Advice says that a mother can be asked for as much as £2,500, which she will not have. I was interested to learn of a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that, while we know that asylum seekers suffer from persecution in their country of origin, their health may suffer further because of destitution in this country. In other words, we in the UK have become a source of persecution. Few of them have the means of supporting themselves, let alone their healthcare. We are just forcing them further into the accident and emergency category. Refugee Action found that 83 per cent of those surveyed said that they had had serious problems since arriving in the UK, despite the relevant fact that four out of five in that survey were between the ages of 21 and 40. Any trauma suffered overseas is compounded by the isolation and deprivation that they experience when they arrive in the UK; and then, in many cases, they are turned away. One wonders why the Government are hesitating in the face of this evidence. Are they still clinging to the deterrent argument? We all remember that there was some logic behind that a few years ago, and some of us believed in it and expected it to work. It does not work; the evidence is otherwise. We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, and the Royal College of General Practitioners that there is no evidence that immigrants enter the country because they wish to benefit from free healthcare. That was endorsed by the British Medical Journal. In 2005, the then Minister was asked what health tourism cost the NHS. He admitted that it was, ""not possible to give a definitive assessment of the scale of health tourism".—[Official Report, Commons, 1/3/05; col. 1076W.]" I expect that the Minister will confirm that this is still the case and that it is a dead issue. More important than that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, has said, it is against medical ethics to deny healthcare to anyone in need. There is plenty of evidence of the urgent need of so-called "failed" asylum seekers. They are not "failed"—they are in many cases waiting to leave the country. Unfortunately, two out of five have problems accessing a general practitioner. Finally, there is public opinion. Asylum seekers are constantly and unfairly confused with illegal migrants. I am not going to go into that, I just urge the Minister to look at the arguments in the Welsh Assembly to take account of the number of members of the public who are positively in favour of genuine asylum seekers and others who may have slipped through the net but who are still deserving of the highest standards of care, for which our health service has a good reputation.