Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of NHS care provided to chargeable overseas visitors was recovered through the Immigration Health Surcharge in each year for which data is available.

The Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) is one of the National Health Service’s migrant cost recovery methods and is designed to recover NHS costs attributable to migrants requiring a visa longer than six months.

The current IHS fee of £1,035, £776 for students and children, came into force in February 2024. It was calculated as the value of the healthcare budget for 2023/24 that an “average” IHS payer accounts for and reflects the Department’s most recent estimate of the cost of providing NHS services to IHS payers. The full methodology can be found in Annex A of The Immigration (Health Charge) (Amendment) Order 2024, at the following link:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2024/16/pdfs/ukia_20240016_en.pdf