I wondered if anybody would pick this up. The 987 Inclusion Scheme is one of the examples cited in an article the Telegraph published today entitled ‘Fast track NHS care for asylum seekers’, plus a longer version online.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyx7dyexy7o
(scroll down for front page)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/03/priority-nhs-services-migrants/?msoc
(need account)
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-daily-telegraph-saturday/20250104/28147928204
(accessible version of shorter article)
There seem to be a variety of special arrangements in various English localities for vulnerable people, including asylum seekers and homeless persons, needing an “urgent” assessment, which mean they can jump the NHS queue. The Telegraph explains that: ‘A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) told The Telegraph: “It is vital that all vulnerable members of society, including asylum seekers, are able to access the healthcare they need, and it has been a legal requirement under successive governments for local NHS commissioners to take the right steps through individual contracts to enable this.’
The very interesting question this raises is whether the legal obligation to provide comprehensive healthcare for asylum seekers is any different from the obligation to provide comprehensive healthcare for the general UK population. This came up in a series of famous judicial review cases in the 1980s (starting with the ex parte Hincks case from 1980) where patients who were denied treatments argued that the Secretary of State for Health was failing in his duty under the primary NHS legislation to arrange the provision of comprehensive care. Crucially, all the cases failed because the courts declined to intervene in what they saw as a matter to be determined by political judgement . In essence, the courts ruled that, in exercising his judgement, the Secretary of State was entitled to take into account the resources available to him and the demands on those resources. The NHS Acts did not impose an absolute duty to provide the specified services, so that the Secretary of State was entitled to have regard to the resources made available to him under current government economic policy. This legal framework has changed a bit since 2012 when responsibility was split between the Health Ministers and NHS executives in England and the devolved administrations, but to the best of my knowledge the general principle that governments and health departments are only obligated to provide NHS services according to available resources remains.
So the question arises: if this is the extent of the government’s legal obligation to provide care for the general population is the principle any different for vulnerable groups, like asylum seekers? [Post edited 4 Jan 11:46]
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