Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the publication entitled, Patients not passports: migrants’ access to healthcare during the coronavirus crisis, published by Medact, Migrants Organise, and The New Economics Foundation in June 2020.

Regulations came into force on 29 January 2020 to add Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) (now known as COVID-19) to Schedule 1 of the National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015. This means there can be no charge made to an overseas visitor for the diagnosis, or treatment, of COVID-19. Patients that are known to be undergoing testing and treatment for coronavirus only are not subject to Home Office status checks.

This information has been widely communicated to NHS staff and the public, including a message published on Public Health England’s Migrant Health Guide, which has been translated into 40 languages.