Health tourism must be a priority after the election

DURING this General Election campaign all the main parties have promised – as they always promise – to spend huge sums of public money on the NHS. Ensuring the health service is properly funded is the right thing to do. It is something that all of us rely on. It is also facing new challenges as a result of people living longer.

But these spending pledges inevitably turn into a bidding war with all parties competing to see who can promise the most. This has everything to do with gaining a short- term political advantage and the voters know that.

With the national finances still precarious it would make more sense to the electorate if the parties could focus on the ways in which the health service can better use the vast sums of money it already receives. There are many opportunities to do this and stopping health tourism would be one of them. It would save up to £ 300million a year while improving the service available for those who have paid into the system. There are Government plans to try to recoup lost money but these are long overdue and the wait has been ruinously expensive.

However we can expect the political class to continue bickering about the amount of our money they would spend on the NHS instead of tackling the deeper issues. They have all had a hand in Britain’s disastrous open doors migration policy that has created this problem – and many others.