Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 20, I will speak also to my Amendment 21 and to Amendment 43, having notified the Minister that I intended do so. These amendments are all concerned with protecting the interests of individual travellers, residents and their families who depend on reciprocal healthcare arrangements and could be affected by the UK leaving the EU without an agreement in place; so all three amendments are about leaving with no deal.

Amendment 20 addresses the duty to provide information, Amendment 21 addresses the issue of costs to British citizens, and Amendment 43 prevents the Secretary of State making regulations on healthcare agreements unless there is a withdrawal agreement with the EU, or the House of Commons has explicitly approved leaving the EU with no deal—the Minister might be familiar with this amendment since it has appeared in other Brexit legislation.

If we crash out, it seems unlikely that the necessary deals with 27 countries to provide reciprocal healthcare payments will be in place; the Minister admitted as much at his briefing, which we attended, and he suggested that we should get health insurance. It might take time to sort out our healthcare, so we have tabled three amendments which we hope will assist this process.

First, we believe that the Government should publicise the changes and provide guidance to people about the impact on their lives, including insurance requirements. That means more than just posting something on the NHS England website. The amendment does what I know that Ministers—and certainly Bill teams—do not like: it puts down a list of places where the changes should be publicised.

Secondly, the Government should have arrangements in place to reimburse British citizens for healthcare costs incurred outside the UK—which would previously have been covered by EU arrangements—for a period of up to six months, until the new healthcare agreements come into effect. This is an obvious, basic protection that should be in place to avoid the risk that our citizens are charged for healthcare because of even two or three weeks of turmoil or churn while agreements are not in place.

Thirdly, Amendment 43 is about how to safeguard reciprocal healthcare in a no-deal situation. It mirrors the amendment that we tabled to the Trade Bill and is about accountability to Parliament. I will be interested to receive the Minister’s reaction to these three proposals, which are about protecting people’s interests in a no-deal situation. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

In so far as the noble Baroness has referred to Amendment 43, which we might otherwise reach on Thursday, I completely understand the motivation, which we have seen elsewhere, to make no deal so intolerable a prospect that one does not want to enter into it—I do not want us to do so and neither do the Government.

If we were to do the responsible thing and pass this legislation before 29 March, so that we have it in place, but with such an amendment within it, that would be extremely ill-advised. If there were no memorandum of understanding with other countries, leading to a bilateral agreement, the result may be that even the regulations that are going through the House would not enable the Secretary of State to have the power to pay for healthcare for UK citizens in other European countries. If we are going to give people reassurance—the Government have an obligation to do that and Amendment 20 says we should do that—we can do so only on the basis of the law as it is. If this legislation were to have such a poison pill added to it, I am afraid that it would make it impossible for civil servants to give the degree of reassurance that we should be giving people.