Secret Home Office policy to detain people with NHS debt at airport found unlawful

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/26/secret-home-office-policy-to-detain-people-with-right-to-live-in-uk-found-unlawfu

my eye was caught by this line:

In a judgment handed down today Mr Justice Chamberlain found that the two women and their young children were falsely imprisoned by the home secretary without justification. He also found that Suella Braverman had breached her duty to consider the equality impact of the policy on women, who are known to be disproportionately affected by NHS charging.

Obviously we expect Suella to have no concerns about the law - either personally or professionally. But I note (again) this policy was almost deliberately intended to be inequal.

But 0.3% of NHS funding is a lot of money.

And it's not just about economics it's about what's right.

People are struggling to feed their kids properly. It doesn't matter whether it's massive unpaid bills in the NHS or people who tell normal people they have to give up their cars (and make their lives 100x harder by getting crap buses that never arrive on time) whilst jetting about the world, people see that the well off have the luxury to be generous and care about the rest of the world and are very quick to suggest changes that negatively impact normal people (but will never impact themselves).

It's hypocrisy.

Very many people in this country are struggling to feed their children, pay their bills and get medical treatment when needed. They don't have time to worry about people from other countries - they are seeing their children suffering right in front of them now. And seemingly there's a whole political class that really don't give a shit and spend all their time talking about issues that are irrelevant to normal people in this country.

It costs a lot of money to chase these debts, to the point where it will be cheaper not to chase smaller sums at all.

When talking about what is right, making GP visits free for immigrants but maternity services chargeable is definitely not right. Only women can be pregnant. Only women can come here as NRPF dependent wives of citizen husbands (e.g. mail order brides) or tier four visa holder husbands and get dumped when pregnant. Making GP visits free because they are essential but charging for mat care is sex discrimination and age discrimination because mat care is also essential. Only women can be pregnant and newborns are, by definition, the youngest possible people. Mat care is essential to the wellbeing of mother and child. Charging for the essential healthcare given to innocent children on their first day of life, just because mum isn't a citizen, is very clearly wrong.

You always get the sad face 😞 n the DM where some idiot went to Tenerife on their holidays without insurance and got posted and broke both legs starting a GoFundMe page. I just think their stupid and deserve everyone they get, part of being an adult and booking a holiday is to ensure you have adequate insurance cover. It shouldn't come out of the coffers of whatever country you've decided to go to on holiday or as a health tourist.

The "injured on holiday" scenario is not what this ruling was about. HTH.

Aw thank you, yes it helps.

Regardless of tourism or coming here because of a relationship, it's still your responsibility to make sure you have adequate insurance. I'm sure when people apply for visas etc they are advised of what they'll need, insurance or funds saved, in terms of accessing healthcare.

The Relationships board is full of women who thought they could trust their husbands and found out the hard way that they can't. Women coming here as dependent wives are just as susceptible to this betrayal as citizen wives and far more vulnerable to the consequences because of NRPF. Women who come here as dependent wives thought they had a form of insurance called "being married to someone who could and would pay for their medical care". If you are going to send a bill for mat care, send it to the men who made these women pregnant before ending the relationship in, what is for the woman, a foreign country.

We have decided as a nation via our elected Parliament that even foreign nationals can visit a GP here without having to pay. Yet we (or our MPs) have failed to recognise that excluding mat care from that policy is sexist and ageist and endangers children. This ruling recognises and addresses one of the consequences of that oversight.

@dimorphism so to be very crude, no it isn’t a lot of money. Very roughly it works out at £8 per taxpayer per year (a bit more or less depending on tax bracket). It is outweighed by the cost of enforcing.

If you want scandal, why not PFI? We still owe 50bn on that shambles which just lines the pockets of a few businessmen and does nothing at all for the nhs. That is roughly a third of annual budget, or to put into perspective, a 100 years of the. 0.3% we’re talking about here.

You claim to be serious about priorities and what’s right, but you aren’t. if you were then you’d be talking about the real wastes of taxpayer money, not dogwhistling about immigrants and the NHS.

Regarding the equality impact, this was ground 4 in the judgment, discussion begins at para 83.

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=%2Few%2Fcases%2FEWHC%2FAdmin%2F2023%2F1272.html

My basic understanding is that as a public authority, the home office is bound by the public sector equality duty which requires them to not only not unlawfully discriminate, but also to have 'due regard' to eliminating discrimination, advancing equality and fostering good relations.

The bog standard acceptable way to show you have had 'due regard' is to do an equality impact assessment but it's not mandatory and they didn't do one. They instead relied in court on earlier assessments conducted by the department of health and the HO in 2011, as well as other equality considerations and information-gathering exercises by both public bodies in later years.

These earlier impact assessments were for the purpose of implementing NHS charging itself, including for maternity care, and for implementing a policy of refusing visa applications for those with certain levels of NHS debt. They showed a marked, disproportionate impact on women. Having had 'due regard' to these impacts, the department of health and the home office were nevertheless free to continue with their policies because they judged them to be proportionate means of achieving legitimate aims and thus lawful indirect discrimination against women.

Unfortunately for the home office, this judicial review was not about NHS charging or refusing new visas because of NHS debt. It was about the lawfulness of detaining people at the border because they have NHS debt. All the evidence about the disproportionate impact on women is still true but the HO failed to show a legal basis for these detentions in the first place.

They have no legitimate aim so there can be no proportionate means. Therefore it is unlawful indirect discrimination against women and the HO failed to comply with the PSED.

Tell that to those who ended up in prison for not paying the TV licence. Or parking tickets.

In short words for the people who apparently don't know how to use a dictionary: A debt is money that you owe to someone for goods or services rendered. A fine is a financial punishment. A debt is not a fine. You can be jailed for not paying a fine. You cannot be jailed for not paying a debt. We don't have "debtors' gaols" in this country any more.

TV Licence non-payment was a specific crime until it was decriminalised, with sentencing guidelines codified in law. Failure to pay the TV Licence resulted in fines or imprisonment, not debt collection.

In recent years, something called a "parking charge notice" has become widespread and causes confusion about what a "parking ticket" is. A penalty charge notice issued for a parking offence committed on the public highway (e.g. parking on a double yellow on the main road) is not a debt, it is a summary court fine, a monetary punishment for breaking a law, just like a speeding ticket is. PENALTY charge notices should not be confused with the PARKING charge notices found on private land, which inform you that by parking there you contractually agree to paying a very high fee. Parking charge notice enforcement is a purely civil matter of debt collection. And yes, the similarity between the names is deliberate, the private landowners want to trick you into thinking that you've been given a summary court fine when you haven't.

Interesting sample of sophistry.

So a fine is not money owed to the government?

No. It's money that the criminal or summary courts, the judicial structure of the State, have claimed from you as punishment for breaking a law. NHS debt is owed indirectly to the government, the executive structure of the state, for services rendered.

They are legally and morally different things.

I think you are seeing this as an accountant would: money out is money out, no matter the reason why it's going out.

I'm seeing it as a lawyer or a job interviewer would. I don't care about your debt, unless your debt is big I'm hiring you for the kind of job where you need to be unbribable. I do care about your criminal record, including parking tickets if I'm hiring for a driving job.

Another way to think of jailing someone for not paying a fine, is that it's punishment escalation in the same way that a prisoner who behaves badly in prison doesn't get the usual "one-third off for good behaviour" but will have to serve the full term. We don't jail someone for an unpaid debt because the debt is not a punishment, so there's no punishment to escalate. The debt gets bigger because of interest, but that's how loans work, it's not a punishment because the debtor has committed no crime.

unless your debt is big I'm hiring you

unless your debt is big and I'm hiring you

This is actually the key bit: the debtor has committed no crime. Detaining someone and their kids for several hours at customs when they have committed no crime is shitty behaviour.