Westministenders: The Return of Parliamentary Sleaze?

[RedToothBrush]

Brexit is quietly going round and round in ever decreasing circles.

The story is that the European parliament will not agree to a transition period beyond 1st January 2020.

The third minister responsible for getting the Repel Bill through the Lords has quit. There are now nearly 400 amendments. It is scheduled for 6 days parliamentary time in the Commons from this coming week. With another 2 possible the following week. Rather bravely AFTER the budget. Bored with May, CVs are being submitted for the position of Chancellor.

Interest Rates are looking likely to rise next week too with the message being 'this is as good as it gets'.

Another team of MPs has gone to the EU to see if they can check up on May and her team. This is unlikely to work as Nicola Sturgeon came across a brick wall.

And then there are the many many distractions from it all.

Catalonia has declared independence, which will consume EU time and energy.

There are rumours that the first prosecution in Trump Russia will be Monday (Guess who is currently in the US. Yep, the gurning one). And there are increasing muttering about Russia over here, with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg being called to respond to a Select Committee investigation into Fake News.

And then there's the sleaze. Jared O'Mara seems to be the first in the queue. There are rumours more will be outed in several parties. Suggestions include May's right hand man Damien Green who was previously named in 2008. And the Tory Whips have a 'sleaze list' which suggests they know whats going on, but have done nothing.

This morning we have Gove making ill advised jokes about Weinstein in this political climate. With Neil Kinnock laughing heartily in response.

Anything that happens will be political to discredit opponents not because there is a change of attitude towards the treatment of women. We know this, because of who is leading the charge on this. The skeletons are being dusted off out the cupboard rather than exposed for the first time in dramatic fashion.

Things, could take a very unexpected turn against this background.

Don't bet against it.

Wrt health tourism. It's estimated at being less than 0.3% of NHS budget will soon go up as budgets come down
The doh figures show the largest amount of that attributable to those popping back for treatment, including expats.
As their data is on the fraudulent use of the nhs and not the UKIP definition, it is fair to say that a lot of health tourism can be attributed to expats.
The thing is, there isn't that much health tourism full stop.

It is only British expats who have not yet reached retirement age who are not entitled to free NHS treatment
They have to obtain the same EHIC for short visits as an E27 / EEA citizen would

• and at least in Germany, that requires proof of insurance in country of residence

Some self-employed expat workers may foolishly skip both state & private health insurance - gambling they won't need it.
Depending on the country of residence, this may not be checked.
They wouldn't be entitled to free treatment in Germany and wouldn't be able to get an EHIC
(not possible to avoid getting health insurance if you're an employee)

I've been mostly in Germany for the last 30 years and I've only heard of one UK expat who actually used the NHS for treatment because he had no German insurance - he injured his leg ligaments skiing.
Didn't work out well for him: what with the delay in getting a flight, then travelling to the airport, on a plane, airport to A&E ...
his injury had worsened a lot by then and he was still limping 2 years later.

And as migrant pensioners are acting within their rights and not fraudulently, there is even less.😀

I agree BigChoc. Who takes time off work to go back to the UK for the doctor?
We did go back to the UK and pay for dental treatment for a bit because we couldn't find a French dentist who gave local anaesthetics. Now we have a lovely young man who gives excellent treatment (and looks like Prince Harry). 😷😀

Yes - so the health tourism is a red herring - I see no problem when I go back to use the NHS (we probably won't have any choice but to go back), and I don't know what is different about me who is not retired doing that and a Spanish elderly ex pat, who worked his whole life in the UK.

I don't understand what you mean by red herring. Inside the EU, you can only legally rely on one social security/ healthcare system. People in Emily's situation, i.e. pensioners who have retired abroad but never worked in their host state, are entirely reliant on the UK system which covers the cost of their treatment abroad. In contrast, Britons working abroad are currently entitled to use their local healthcare system but not the NHS - this is the case for me and my family, we have no NHS entitlement and theoretically when visiting the UK we would need to present our (French) EHICs.

After Brexit, we don't really know what the situation will be. The UK govt will be free to fix any criteria it wishes for accessing the NHS, as any bilateral agreements with the EU will fall away unless explicitly renegotiated. Those of us who are living and working in EU states will presumably continue to access the local healthcare systems into which we pay, but it will depend on whether we meet the requirements of our host states.

Bilateral agreements may continue but this will surely depend upon the type of brexit - if there really is "no deal" then all existing agreements will end as of 31/3/2019 until new ones are negotiated.

Actually Misti have worked here, but contributions not enough for France to become competent state. Interestingly I was reading the other day that the entry time for PUMA is very short (3 months?), to allow equal access for people out of the EU. So if the S1 goes, it looks like PUMA.

Because people are under the impression that expats are all rich pensioners. Couldn't possibly understand where that impression comes from media, especially right wing

How long does it take for your host state to become your competent state Emily?

With regards to healthcare rights in France I imagine that non-EU rights depend on "regular" residence and therefore may require some sort of visa or resident's card as proof of status. I am anticipating some bureaucratic fun and games. When we arrived 20 years ago we encountered some interesting catch 22 situations, including not being allowed to register my business without a social security number, but not being able to obtain a social security number without employment. Apparently this sort of thing is still par for the course for non EU residents.

My feeling is that the impact on health care access is an interesting point of discussion but until we know what sort of brexit, and how individual states will react, it's all a bit pointless.

I think Hashi there are two stereotypes. One is of rich pensioners with a chateau in Dordogneshire and the other is of endless knees-ups on the Costa. Neither group speaks a word of the language, mixes with the locals or knows anything about the country they live in. Every article in the paper involves pictures of white hair, deckchairs, bowling greens and walking-sticks.
Not that I am pissed off by it you understand.....

*Mistig it was a complicated calculation involving trimestres. As it was RSI it was all somewhat opaque... 😀
But we ran a business for three years and I taught part-time for the Académie.

Mistigri sorry. I do like this slidey thing on IOS11 but it gets away from me sometimes....

Well I was really talking in reference to retired ex pats travelling home to access the NHS - which is clearly allowed, so why people bring it up as health tourism baffles me.

Not all retired British expats retain rights, the retirees that Emily is discussing are specifically those who worked all their lives in the UK before retiring to a place in the sun in the EU.

I don't have any sense of what the incidence of health tourism is, but it certainly does happen. My tenant recently had several months of cancer treatment in the UK after falling ill during a family visit. He was too sick to return to France for several months. Theoretically this should have been paid for by France, but in practice I am pretty sure he gave a UK address.

We have received NHS healthcare in the past without presenting an EHIC, and tbh until all the fuss about healthcare tourism in the last two years it wouldn't even had occurred to me that we were defrauding the system. And lots of the Brits on the expat groups on FB use the NHS for things like eye tests - we did this for DS in the recent past, and I could easily have got away without paying.

Because people are under the impression that expats are all rich pensioners.

I don't have a feel for what % are pensioners, because I live in an area where at a rough estimate at least 90% of the Britons are working age, but I suspect that the "rich" ones are a tiny minority.

In 20 years here I've probably met only two rich retiree couples who did the place in the sun thing, but if you lived in the Dordogne or on the Côte d'Azur or bits of the Lot or the Gers you would probably have a different view. No one is keeping any statistics though.

Round here the typical Brit expat is middle class with kids, on a modest self-employed income usually bolstered by UK rental income. Most of them qualify for means tested benefits.

How will we now distinguish between the two disgraced former Tory defence secretaries? When we know what the real reason(s) for resignation are.

I know about two-thirds pensioners but that is because I am one. I also know quite a few people with small businesses but we are not near enough to a big town to know many people in salaried work. In Normandy the most common reasons for being here are animals (not us) and gardening (us). I teach for the U3A and have been on the local council and lots of people I know do similar things. About three-quarters of our friends are French.

Yes Driven one gets the impression that the Tories are boiling over with rage. I am in my late sixties and struggle to remember a time when politics was like this.

I thought that the "health tourists" that the media / Joe Public / government were concerned about were women giving birth on the NHS, especially those with complicated deliveries / multiples.

Not so much the Costa del Sol retirees (who are A-OK because they are frequently old, white DM readers)

^BRITAIN’S “SEX DOSSIER” HAS ECLIPSED AN EVEN DARKER SCANDAL
The rot in Westminster goes beyond sexual harassment, to other forms of subversion that have yet to be exposed^
www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/britain-sex-dossier-scandal

"How will we now distinguish between the two disgraced former Tory defence secretaries? "

The Werrity-sniffer and the Leadsom-handwarmer

I'm fairly sure that the Tories aren't really bothered by those "health tourists" who are (working age) British expats;
it's the non-British, especially brown or black ones they are getting so worked up about.

All part of making the UK a "hostile climate" for immigrants
Makes it an increasingly hostile climate for everyone who isn't a Tory white nationalist

All part of making the UK a "hostile climate" for UKIP stereotypes of immigrants

is closer to the truth.

You know, for a collection of people who generally never voted, it's arguable UKIP did more to change British politics than any number of Red Wedge concerts.

Loathsome-handwarmer surely