Huge fees on foreign healthcare workers

HUGE fees paid by foreign healthcare workers to help fund the NHS’

Many of your readers will be aware of the work that Equality Action, Loughborough & Charnwood has undertaken over the last 50 years.

Our focus has always been about fairness and an individual’s rights to an even `playing field’. Many of our clients come from a BAME background.

It is interesting that around one in every seven NHS workers is foreign-born, many having left their home country to serve our health services. Our dependence upon them has attracted growing attention as they have been on the front line of the fight against coronavirus. We all know that many of the nursing staff that cared for our own Prime Minister when he was so ill came from abroad.

Hence we are concerned to hear the `Independent’s’ report that Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is refusing to cut or axe the huge fees paid by foreign healthcare workers to help fund the NHS – just three weeks after promising to “review” the controversial charges.

We note that the fees currently stand at

£400 per annum for each member of a

family, have to be paid in advance, and will be raised to £624 per person per annum from October 2020. For a family this can amount to many thousands of pounds. We also note that the BMA and RCN are outraged by the decision. The Home Secretary raised expectations back in April when she hinted at concessions for migrants working in the NHS whilst praising them for their “extraordinary contribution” during the Covid-19 crisis. Incidentally statistics suggest that there is a disproportionate number of deaths and severe reaction to the virus in medical staff who have come from a BAME background. As citizens we dutifully and gratefully clap each Thursday to demonstrate our thanks to the NHS and care workers for their bravery and unstinting commitment. What have we come to, when we reward their bravery by imposing these draconian charges? We hope that you will join us in lobbying your MP and the Government to get this decision overturned so that we show all our health workers the respect and gratitude they richly deserve.

David Featonby Chair of Equality Action