Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to ensure that patients who are not eligible for free NHS treatment are charged the relevant fee; and if he will make a statement.

Under the National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) (Amended) Regulations 2017, providers of National Health Service secondary funded care are required by law to make and recover costs from patient who are not ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom where no category of exemption applies. In cases where treatment is non-urgent, providers are required to recover costs in advance of treatment.

In order to assist providers in doing this, the Department has issued guidance to providers of NHS funded secondary care ‘Guidance on implementing the overseas visitors charging regulations’ which set out the rules and best practices processes to follow to recover costs for treatment, including identifying those who may be chargeable and ensuring they are charged the relevant fee. This includes identifying those patients whose treatment costs may be subject to reciprocal healthcare arrangements, including the European Health Insurance Card. The national guidance sets out that those patients who are identified as chargeable must be charged using either the national tariff or a locally agreed tariff if there is no national tariff for the treatment provided.