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CHRIS SKIDMORE MP: How soaring immigration has piled on the pressure

By Chris Skidmore Mp

PUBLISHED: 23:09, 2 June 2013 | UPDATED: 07:35, 3 June 2013

Look closely at the numbers of people using hospital Accident and Emergency wards and you will see a worrying trend.

Between 1987 and 2003, attendances at A&E remained steady, with around 14 million people each year. Then, in 2004, the numbers jumped by 18 per cent to 16.5 million.

By last year, the figure was 21.7 million � a 50 per cent increase in ten years.

By contrast, European countries such as Sweden have registered a barely negligible rise in attendances over the same period.

Quite rightly, critics point to how changes to GP working hours have piled strain on A&E departments, deluged by patients who can�t see their family doctor at night or at weekends.
Quite rightly, critics point to how changes to GP working hours have piled strain on A&E departments, deluged by patients who can't see their family doctor at night or at weekends

Quite rightly, critics point to how changes to GP working hours have piled strain on A&E departments, deluged by patients who can't see their family doctor at night or at weekends

But there are other reasons that may explain the rise in demand. Crucially, there are concerns that the extra demands placed upon A&E also stem from a rise in immigration.

From 2001 to 2011, our population rose from 52.4 million to 56.1 million � an increase of 7 per cent and the largest rise in the population since the census began in 1801.

It cannot be a coincidence that 2004 � the year in which A&E attendance jumped so noticeably � was the year that Labour changed GPs� contracts to let them opt out of out-of-hours care, and also the year that East European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic acceded to the EU, allowing their people free migration to the UK.

We simply cannot go on discounting the effect that such immigration has had upon our healthcare services.

In 2011, the NHS spent �23 million on translators and interpreters � a rise of 17 per cent since 2007.

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The Nuffield Trust, a healthcare research body, has also identified that the number of migrants registering with GPs rose from 550,000 a year in 2003/4 to 625,000 a year by 2005/6.

But a bigger problem is almost certainly with migrants who do not register with a GP. Arriving in this country with no clear understanding of how the NHS works, and not knowing which part of the health service to turn to when they are ill, they may go straight to A&E rather than to a GP.

Dr John Heyworth, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, has spoken of �increases in the number of immigrants who tend to visit A&E routinely and not register with family doctors�.

Other organisations report the same trend. A UK Border Agency study into the impact of migration quoted one survey of 700 migrants which found only half had registered with a GP.

As one document prepared by the Sandwell Health Alliance (a consortium of GPs in the West Midlands) in August 2011 admitted, the �immigrant population have a lack of understanding of how the health service works, and so use A&E as the norm�.
The demand for NHS services continues to rise, our population is rapidly ageing and obesity and other chronic conditions put ever greater strain on the Health Service

The demand for NHS services continues to rise, our population is rapidly ageing and obesity and other chronic conditions put ever greater strain on the Health Service

A further contributing factor may be that since migrants tend to settle in more deprived areas, they may not have rapid access to general practitioners.

The Health Services Journal found in 2011 that in the poorer areas of the country, 31 per cent of patients could not access a GP within two days, compared to 19 per cent in the wealthiest areas.

Unable to seek the advice of a local family doctor, patients in the poorest 10 per cent of areas were 53 per cent more likely to attend A&E in a given year than the wealthiest 10 per cent.

The NHS now receives more funding than ever before: �104 billion, rising to �112 billion by 2015. Yet the system, as A&E admissions prove, is under ever greater strain.

The demand for NHS services continues to rise, our population is rapidly ageing and obesity and other chronic conditions put ever greater strain on the Health Service. It has been estimated that by 2050 the costs of the NHS could reach �250 billion.

Unless we take action about how we want to ensure that healthcare is provided free, regardless of the ability to pay, then in future decades the very future of the NHS could be under threat.

Of course, the NHS has never been �free�: it is paid for by taxpayers. And it is the contributory system that we need to restore if people are going to have trust in their public services.
Unless we take action about how we want to ensure that healthcare is provided free, regardless of the ability to pay, then in future decades the very future of the NHS could be under threat

Unless we take action about how we want to ensure that healthcare is provided free, regardless of the ability to pay, then in future decades the very future of the NHS could be under threat

The fact is we cannot sustain a health service that will treat anyone who arrives in the country without a record of contributing or paying into the service.

For too long, so-called �health tourists� who are not eligible for free NHS care have managed to get treatment but then don�t pay the cost. Over the past five years, health tourists are estimated to have cost the country more than �40 million.

And this is likely to have been only the tip of the iceberg, given that several health trusts did not collect data or records of foreign nationals who should have been charged.

Medical professionals who have witnessed this scandalous abuse of the NHS are finally speaking out.

The distinguished Professor J Meirion Thomas, of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, said the founder of the NHS, Aneurin Bevan, �would be outraged by the abuse of his flagship social reform on such a scale�.

He added: �The time has come to protect the NHS. British taxpayers should not be funding an International Health Service.�

He estimated that the costs to the NHS from �health tourism� could in fact run to billions of pounds a year.

Of course, no one would deny the benefits to this country of migrants who work tirelessly to make a better life for themselves, including those workers who devote themselves to the NHS itself as doctors, nurses, porters and orderlies.

But we should look at introducing a �Green Card� system similar to the United States, which would allow migrants permission to work but not grant them access to public services until they had paid a minimum of, say, five or ten years in tax contributions.

Until that time, migrants entering the country should be required to take out medical insurance before they are granted a visa.

I realise this will require a substantial renegotiation of the UK�s relationship with the EU over how benefits and welfare are paid. But if we are to save the NHS, then we must act to ensure that everyone who is treated by its doctors and nurses puts into the system before they take something out.

Chris Skidmore MP is a member of commons health committee
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Another ar--hole who is trying to get his head back in the money trough by telling people what they have known for years, bye bye prat.

Cor blimey guv, you don't say that immigration and health tourists are putting a strain and costing the NHS money. The next thing is we will be told that immigration is putting a strain on social housing, schooling etc.etc. I can't believe that our politicians have the stupidity to write an article like this and expect us to appreciate them telling us something we don't know. Well you are 30 years too late. It is because of this in ability to recognize what has been staring them in the face for years that UKIP are on the rise. We wanted action years ago and you lot have had more than one chance and all of you have been found wanting. Come 2015 it is goodbye/