Hospitals in London are prioritising patients who don’t speak English for care while sending native or fluent speakers to the back of the queue, a report has found.
According to the Mail on Sunday, the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which has five hospitals in north-west London under its remit, has begun to push patients who require a language translator to the front of the line.
The policy is supposedly intended to cut costs for interpreters by reducing the number of hours worked. However, this results in English speakers being deliberately passed over.
The policy even reportedly applies in clinics that have a ticketing system for determining the order of patients seen.
One patient told the MoS: “It’s a clinic, so you go in expecting to wait a while, but when someone behind me in the queue was let into see the doctor before me I asked the receptionist why and was told that the people with interpreters are prioritised because they can’t wait for more than an hour.”
London, which has become a minority English city, has the largest proportion of migrants of any region of the UK, with more than 40 per cent of its residents being foreigners.
It is currently unclear if the policy of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is being adopted by hospitals in other areas of the country.
However, the decision to prioritise non-English speakers by a branch of the state-run healthcare system was criticised by former immigration minister and Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick.
“Brits are already waiting too long for treatment. The last thing they should be subjected to is the indignity of being pushed to the back of the queue,” Jenrick said.
“This is yet more evidence of the pressure mass migration places on our public services and the difficulties integrating such unprecedented numbers… Non-English speakers shouldn’t be given a queue pass.”
Responding to the report, a spokesman for the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust said: “We are committed to responding to the specific needs raised by any of our patients – and every patient has the right to a professional interpreter.”