Finally, an end to health tourism in Britain?

‘When this paper reported a senior surgeon’s warning that health tourism could be costing the NHS “billions”‘, begins today’s leader in the Daily Mail on the government’s efforts to clamp down on treating foreign nationals. That’s one (rather cheeky) way of putting it. Another way is ‘When this newspaper reported a piece that appeared in The Spectator and made it a cover’. For our subscribers, it was that familiar feeling of déjà lu — when you read in the newspapers something you first saw in our pages. But the problem of NHS tourism, which Prof J Meirion Thomas exposed, is at last being addressed.

Dr Thomas’ original Spectator article appeared in February this year, saying Britain could not afford an International Health Service. The official figures then suggested health tourism hardly cost a thing, but in his experience as a cancer surgeon, he said he’d seen how people are wrongly categorised as residents and were costing the NHS ‘billions’.