Migrant boy wins right to fight for free care on NHS
TAXPAYERS face a huge bill for a Pakistani teenager’s medical care after he won the right yesterday to fight for free NHS treatment because it is superior to the care he would get in his homeland.
The 16- year- old was facing deportation but has been told he can appeal against it on human rights grounds because of his medical problems.
If he eventually wins his battle to stay solely to get better medical treatment it could open the doors for health tourists from around the world to descend on Britain.
The High Court ruling came just a day after an official report revealed foreign visitors and short- term migrants are costing the NHS up to £ 2billion a year.
Campaigners yesterday hit out at the news that the teenager, who suffers from a blood disorder which stunts growth and is potentially fatal, was on the verge of creating a legal precedent that could endanger Britain’s health service.
Tory MP Dominic Raab said: “Of course, your heart goes out to anyone suffering. But, this novel human rights ruling risks opening the floodgates to foreign nationals claiming a right to stay to receive NHS care because it is better than the health care they would receive at home.
“The implications of this ruling for the NHS and the taxpayer are staggering.”
Ukip MEP Gerard Batten said: “It is a crazy judgement which is saying the National Health Service is actually an international health service open to all but paid for by the British taxpayer.”
In a judgement yesterday, Lord Justice Maurice Kay told the teenager – identified only as MQ – he could appeal his case to the Upper Tribunal immigration court.
He said that MQ had entered the country lawfully and was guaranteed medical aid because he was legally a child.
But he “arrived with his serious medical conditions at an advanced stage and... it will be relevant to consider whether his arrival here was a manifestation of ‘ health tour-
Lord Justice Kay said the case raised the ‘ health tourism’ issue ism’.” The court was told that MQ is currently being treated at the Whittington Hospital in north London where he gets a transfusion every fortnight and is given growth hormones. Without the hugely expensive medication the teenager would die within a few years.
The lower standard of treatment available in Pakistan meant that if sent home he could only hope to live into his 30s at best, the court heard.
The teenager and his mother came to the UK in June last year on a six- month visitor’s visa.
They immediately applied for asylum and permission to stay on human rights grounds as well as seeking out medical treatment. After the Home Office refused the pair’s applications, they appealed and yesterday’s hearing was their fifth legally- aided attempt to get the decision overturned.
Lawyers argued that sending MQ back home would breach his right to protection from inhuman treatment and the right to a private life under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Both the Department of Health and the Home Office declined to comment.