Panic at Downing Street? Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave up on Thursday evening May 21 to charge healthcare workers of foreign origin for access to the British hospital system, despite having confirmed this measure twenty-four hours earlier at the Communal room. Wednesday, May 20, Priti Patel, his Minister of the Interior, had already agreed, urgently, to extend to the families of all foreign employees of the National Health Service (NHS, the British health service) an indefinite right of residence in United Kingdom if they died of Covid-19, including for the families of stretcher bearers or housekeepers.
The pressure had become too strong, including in the ranks of the Conservative Party, where more and more voices were no longer hesitant in the last few hours to challenge the Prime Minister. Accept that the "Overload", the tax required of foreign residents (non-European) to access the national hospital system, goes from 400 pounds annually currently to 624 pounds next October, including for health workers who have so many helped the British to overcome the Covid-19 outbreak? According to July 2019 figures, 13.1% of NHS staff are not British; the proportion rises to 17% for employees of retirement homes – often paid the minimum wage and in precarious contracts.
An "immoral" tax
This surcharge would "Perceived as mean and mean", Conservative MP Roger Gale pointed out on Twitter, Thursday, explaining that it had rallied to a transparty group of elected officials demanding the repeal of a measure introduced by the Cameron government in 2015, well before the Covid-19 crisis. This "Overload" East "Immoral", also tried Chris Patten, former chairman of the Tory party, on the BBC. And the former MEP and European Commissioner to add:
"We depend on people who come from abroad to (make it work) our retirement homes, I find it monstrous to treat people who come from elsewhere to help and risk their lives in such difficult circumstances. "
William Wragg, president of the public service commission of Westminster, Bob Neill, that of the justice commission, and Robert Halfon, at the head of the education commission, followed suit. Just like theEvening Standard, the daily led by George Osborne, ex-chancellor of the Exchequer of David Cameron, who called Boris Johnson " to flip-flop before it gets too embarrassing ".
You have 53.52% of this article to read. The suite is reserved for subscribers.
