Migrants are pushing NHS to breaking point, says top cancer doctor

THE NHS has been left ‘ on its knees’ by uncontrolled migration from the EU, a leading cancer expert will warn tomorrow.

Professor Angus Dalgleish, the principal of the Cancer Vaccine Institute, says the NHS is being bled dry of resources by health tourists denied care at home.

Cancer treatment can cost £200,000 and, under Brussels rules, Britain has to offer it to all EU nationals.

Professor Dalgleish says this partly explains the NHS’s £3billion deficit. He will also claim the Government has hindered progress into key disease areas ‘by blindly adhering to EU directives’.

‘Our membership of the EU is putting an intolerable strain on our NHS,’ Professor Dalgleish, a melanoma expert of global renown, will tell a conference.

‘The NHS is on its knees and could collapse completely. NHS Trusts were not prepared for the millions of EU migrants who have poured into Britain because the Government estimate was nowhere near the reality.

‘GP services are collapsing under the huge number of people they are having to treat and this has led to less than 20 per cent of students wanting to become GPs.

‘Britain is attracting thousands of health tourists from across the EU who cannot get certain drugs or treatments in their home country so come to Britain and demand them as EU citizens.

‘ Cancer treatment can cost £200,000 a year per patient and while we remain in the EU, Britain has to offer treatment for any EU citizen who comes here so as to not discriminate.

‘The Health Service is being bled dry – this is why our NHS faces a £3 billion deficit.’

Professor Dalgleish, a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, also claims that EU rules and regulations are holding back cancer trials which could discover new cures or treatments. He will say: ‘ The introduction of the EU clinical trials directive meant academic led studies carried out in Britain became illegal if not performed to new EU standards. By blindly adhering to EU directives, the British Government has hindered crucial medical research in key disease areas.

‘The unfathomable amount of EU regulation and bureaucracy has led to a third less clinical studies taking place in Britain.

‘Britain was world leading in these studies but because of the EU, we now lag behind the United States.’

Professor Dalgleish is also expected to make a withering attack on the EU working time directive – which the Prime Minister opted not to challenge in his referendum negotiations with Brussels.

He will say: ‘This has destroyed the ability of the NHS to deliver service and training.

‘Training has been hit so hard that standards have slipped to worrying levels. Surgeons are not gaining the same experience a registrar previously had when appointed to consultant positions.

‘Other EU countries were creative in incorporating the working time directive to ensure specialists could get the 60 hours a week experience needed but the British Government adopted the directive without thinking through the ramifications.

‘As a result, training has been hit so hard that standards have dropped and patient care has suffered.’

Professor Dalgleish is due to deliver his speech at a conference titled The Good Life After Brexit, which has a theme that Britain will be safer leaving the EU.

He will share a platform with former Tory ministers Liam Fox, David Davis and John Redwood, Labour MP Graham Stringer, Ukip leader Nigel Farage and the DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr.

The conference has been organised by David Campbell Bannerman MEP, co-chairman of Conservatives For Britain.

‘Patient care has

suffered’