Racist checks on NHS patients

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HEALTH Minister Gerard Vaughan has issued secret instructions to twelve hospitals to question every patient admitted about their nationality.

This includes accident victims, pregnant women, and psychiatric patients. It is part of a scheme to be introduced next year to charge overseas patients for any non-urgent medical treatment.

The hospitals involved Bridge: Royar Lea, Con Annelor.

Royal Leamingtor Spa; West Suffolk, Bury St Edmunds; Royal Gwent, South Wales; North Manchester; Western Infirmary, Glasgow; and, in London, Hillingdon, University College (Carden), St Bernards (Ealing), and Royal Northern (Holloway).

Patients are to be questioned on whether they are permanently resident or working in this country. If they are not, they are to be asked further questions. All this, before they are given outpatient appointments or admitted to casualty.

Staff will be asked to comment and a consultant to decide whether their treatment is considered urgent. In other words, a huge amount of patients' and staff time will be taken up in non-urgent, nonmedical inquiries, before they can be treated for whatever they have come to the hospital for.

Revealed

It has now been revealed that this survey was ordered after another inquiry in four area health authorities about how staff handled overseas patients and those from ethnic minorities. Staff in Oxford, Southampton, West Birmingham, and Ealing (West London) were questioned.

In three of the authorities, Oxford, Birmingham, and Southampton, no formal procedures existed: people with "a foreignsounding name, foreign appearance, hotel address, Vaughan: passport checks first, care second or address abroad" were treated as likely overseas patients.

In Ealing much more rigorous checks were made which led to suspected overseas patients (and you can guess the sort of criteria they used!) at Perivale maternity hospital being made to wait for up to an hour.

The conclusion of this exercise, that checks were 'irregular and infrequent' and that staff didn't know the regulations, is what led to the policy • of blanket questioning of everyone at the 12 chosen hospitals.

When Patrick Jenkin introduced his plan for charging overseas visitors, there was strong opposition both from health service unions and ethnic minority groups.

They pointed out that it would inevitably lead to harassment of black patients quite legitimately entitled to free NHS treatment even on the Tories' racist criteria.

It was also pointed out that one of the likely effects would be for pregnant women who felt they would be likely to be harassed and questioned just not turning up to ante-natal clinics -when there is supposed to be a Health Education Council campaign to encourage women (especially Asian women) to use antenatal facilities.

Staff at two hospitals, Bradford and Newcastle, refused to cooperate with the survey, so it is only going ahead at the 10 others.

NUPE has called for staff to boycott the survey, and NALGO has condemned it. The other health service unions opposed Jenkin's plan when it was first unveiled.

They should also be calling on their members to refuse to cooperate with this survey. The whole thing should be scrapped. READERS of the Daily Telegraph are being offered a new line in 'Do It Yourself' magazines.

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