Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will undertake an impact assessment of his Department's policy on upfront charging for NHS services.

Upfront charging of overseas visitors for non-urgent or immediately necessary care has been recommended best practice by the Department for several years, including in published national charging guidance.

Identified income from charging overseas visitors for NHS services was £290 million in 2015/16 and £358 million in 2016/17.

Following a public consultation on the proposed amendments to the National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015 (the Charging Regulations) that ran from December 2015 to March 2016, the Government set out in its response to that consultation in February 2017 that it intended to amend the existing Charging Regulations and included a commitment that all non-urgent secondary care services provided to an overseas visitor should be charged upfront and in full, unless otherwise exempt.

During the decision-making process the Government carefully considered the impact the proposed changes in all National Health Service out-of-hospital settings may have. The regulations providing for these changes were introduced on 19 July alongside a published impact assessment that estimated that the net income per annum as a result of the new regulations would be up to £40 million per year. This included the impact of upfront charging, the implementation of which we will keep under review.