Illegal migrants and so-called asylum seekers are being prioritised over native Britons by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), a report has claimed.
While British citizens often have to wait hours to be treated at Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments, NHS schemes such as “987 Inclusion Health” prioritise “undocumented migrants”, meaning that they get to skip to the front of the queue, The Telegraph reported.
According to the broadsheet, even asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected are still being given “preferential” treatment over many native Britons, reporting that special “walk-in services” at community day centres in South London are afforded to failed asylum seekers, while up to 15 per cent of other locals were forced to wait at least a week before seeing a doctor in November.
Meanwhile, London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital has a specific healthcare programme for “refugees and asylum seekers” in Lambeth and Southwark, which also includes access for illegal migrants and asylum seekers.
A source told the paper that the service was set up to “address unmet needs in particularly vulnerable people, who have complex health needs that are best managed in these settings.”
NHS England has claimed that such schemes are designed to combat inequality in the healthcare industry. A spokesman said the socialised healthcare service is “legally required to provide healthcare services to asylum seekers and migrants which are free at the point of use” and has “a legal duty to address inequalities in access to NHS services.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) told The Telegraph: “It is vital that all vulnerable members of society, including asylum seekers, are able to access the healthcare they need, and it has been a legal requirement under successive governments for local NHS commissioners to take the right steps through individual contracts to enable this.
“Our £26billion investment in the NHS and reforms to the health service will make sure that it’s there for everyone, once again.”
However, the socialised healthcare system has come under criticism, including from top cancer speicialist Dr Karol Sikora, who said: “The only prioritisation in health care should be the urgency of medical need, especially in the Emergency Department,” he said.
“A patient that’s not breathing properly and going blue needs immediate care whatever their colour, creed or country of origin.”
The preferential treatment for migrants was also lambasted by political opponents of the leftist Labour Party government, such as Reform UK boss Nigel Farage, who remarked: “Welcome to Keir Starmer’s Britain. This is unfair, it’s wrong, and only Reform will end it.”
Farage’s deputy, Boston and Skegness MP Richard Tice, added: “This sums up broken Britain. Whilst hard-working British people are waiting weeks for GP appointments and hours on end in A&E, illegals get to cut to the front of the queue.
“The Tories started this and now Labour continue to make a mockery of those that pay into the system for these services.
“Reform UK are clear, those that try to come over in boats will be turned back and those that have already come via boats will be deported and not get special treatment.”