Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Roger Gale Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I welcome this paving measure, which I think will give significant comfort to many thousands of mainly elderly and often very frightened United Kingdom expat citizens mainly in Europe, but also around the world. For reasons I will not bore the House with, I have a very extended network of contacts with the expat community mainly within European Union countries but also worldwide. I want to concentrate for a few minutes mostly on those people.

The people I want to talk about are expat United Kingdom citizens who by and large have spent their working lives paying taxes and national insurance here in Britain, and who, for reasons of family, health or sun, have moved to France or Spain. There is also a significant community living throughout the rest of the European Union and one should most certainly not overlook the needs of those who are resident in the EU for professional purposes. Those include all manner of circumstances, for example people working for companies or on Her Majesty’s service in one form or another. The degree of uncertainty that has surrounded their healthcare futures has been considerable and very worrying. I do not think we can over-egg that.

I want to raise one specific concern, which relates to the emphasis on reciprocity. I say that because I happen to chair the all-party group on frozen British pensions. A frozen pensioner is one who is living in any country other than the United Kingdom and is entitled to a UK pension, but who receives that pension frozen at the point of departure unless there is reciprocity. For example, a pensioner living on one side of the Niagara Falls in Canada has their pension frozen, whereas a pensioner living on the other side in the United States has their pension uprated in line with inflation. What I do not want to see is that situation replicated in this deal, so that we get a second class healthcare system whereby people in some countries within the European Union get healthcare while others do not. I hope very much it will be possible to strike a deal with the remaining 27 European Union countries, rather than cherry-picking each country and then having to work out who is entitled to “free” healthcare and who is not. That would be a nightmare. If we are going to get this right, and we must get it right, we have to make sure that everybody is covered.

Tourists fall under a slightly different category. Tourists who go right around the world expect to take out health insurance for their travel. I see no reason why they should not do so and why they should not do so in the European Union countries once we have left.

For those who choose to live in countries such as France, Spain, Greece and Italy in the European Union, we have to make very special provision. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to ask my hon. Friend the Minister to make sure that we do not allow this measure, which is very valuable indeed, to become subject to the law of unintended consequences. We must roll as smoothly as possible from EHIC to a new system that is fair to the taxpayer. I take entirely the point that this cannot be a blank cheque, but we must make sure that the elderly and vulnerable, who have chosen to live overseas having paid their taxes here, are well, truly and properly covered.