Foreign nurses: a welcome U-turn
“The one thing, for good or ill, about having a populist for a Prime Minister,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent, “is that policy U-turns can be executed with remarkable speed.” Last week, just 24 hours after Boris Johnson had told the Commons that NHS and care workers would not be exempted from the visa health surcharge imposed on all immigrants to Britain, his government reversed course. It had become clear that Tory and Labour MPs alike objected to the idea of charging foreign-born workers an extra fee for the right to use a health service that couldn’t function without them. Many hailed the move as an early win for Labour leader Keir Starmer, but it would probably have been better for him if the PM had “dug his heels in”. Johnson is better off without this unpopular policy, and few voters will remember the U-turn.
Having agreed to exempt healthcare workers, the PM should now consider revising the arrangements for other migrants as well, said Kate Andrews in The Spectator. As things stand, visa applicants have to pay £400 for the NHS surcharge – and that’s for each year of their stay. Thus for a three-year visa, they have to pay £1,200 upfront. With a spouse, it’s double that; add in two children and you’re looking at almost £5,000. And that’s before the planned increase in the surcharge in October, when it’s set to jump to £624. The policy is designed to ensure that migrants contribute to the cost of any NHS treatment, but they already do that in the normal way: by paying tax. There’s a clear case for reducing the surcharge and no longer requiring all of it to be paid upfront.
The surcharge never made sense as a way of dealing with so-called health tourism, said The Independent. It was all about “the Brexit-based desire to look tough on immigration”. But the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the public mood on this front. We’re living in a very different world today, agreed Nick Ferrari in the Daily Express. The coronavirus has shown how much we depend on essential workers: not just those working in hospitals, but also those stacking shelves and doing other low-paid jobs. The Government must rethink the immigration bill that is currently before Parliament, which under its points-based system requires would-be migrants to meet a general minimum salary threshold of £25,600. If the current crisis has shown us anything, it is that “the value to society of someone cannot be determined by the size of their salary”. The Government’s stance on immigration is out of step with the times.