The British government is planning further cuts to healthcare entitlement for undocumented migrants, despite a recent court ruling which said that existing policies, which charge failed asylum seekers for secondary healthcare, were
unlawful.

With proposed changes, illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers would have no
right to see a GP, and be denied access to everything beyond ‘immediate and necessary’ care. A report examining these proposals, due in December 2007, has been repeatedly delayed.

Restrictions on secondary care for asylum seekers and undocumented migrants were introduced in 1989 by the Conservative government. Those affected can register with a doctor, but can’t be referred to a hospital.

The NHS was launched in 1948 with the aim of providing free healthcare for all. In the current proposals, former Health Minister John Hutton states, “we must remember that the NHS is a national institution not an international one”. Public opinion polls display concerns that reducing access restrictions would create an influx of migrants, with detrimental consequences for public services like the NHS.

However, government research suggests that asylum seekers have little control over which country they migrate to. Medical charity Medact states that “there is no evidence that people seeking asylum do so because they wish to benefit from free health care. Rather they are simply exercising a legal right to seek refuge from persecution. The current policy, however unintentional, has been to leave some of the most vulnerable people in the UK without access to health care.”

A doctor’s duty of care is to serve patients, not to bow to political pressures. Yet the
government is asking the medical community to assist in enforcing border controls.

Denying universal access to GPs may also jeopardise public health. Although specific contagious diseases are exempt from entitlement policy because they threaten public health, as the organisation Medical Justice argues, ‘without a GP, who would make the diagnosis?’

With proposed changes, doctors must decide if a person’s need is immediate before treating them. Regardless of the ethical implications of doctors refusing treatment, in most cases it is more economically and medically effective to treat a patient early, before their condition becomes an emergency.

Within our current political and economic system, the NHS struggles to provide free
care to all those in need. However, restricting a person’s right to see a GP undermines the role of doctors, threatens public health and reduces treatment to expensive emergency care rather than prevention.