The Labour Government

[I'm With Stupid]

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Those who work in the NHS are exempt from it as well. Seems like a fair system all round.

Why? Why should someone working and paying tax have to pay twice just because they're an immigrant?

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Unfortunately there are starving people all over the world ( mainly due to badly run countries who take money in charity and waste it) are we to fund the rest of world? And/or bring them all over here?

Mainly due to corrupt politicians stealing public resources and shifting the profits out of the country, almost always with the help of our banking system and our tax havens, and often at the behest of our corporations. Fix that, and they wouldn't need charity in the first place. People talk about reparations for colonialism, but how about fixing the robbery that's still happening seemingly with our full blessing?

 

[metalblue]

Why? Why should someone working and paying tax have to pay twice just because they're an immigrant?

Its not twice, its £1k a year or there abouts for temporary residents. Plenty of potential for additional costs, eg costs with getting your medical history from your home country, interpretation of them (possibility you’ll need an interpreter at appointments), you’ve not paid in to the system up until the point you arrive. Other / all countries have this type of system - the UK isn’t unique.

Once they become an ordinarily resident they don’t pay it. By then they’d have contributed a few years to the system.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Its not twice, its £1k a year or there abouts for temporary residents. Plenty of potential for additional costs, eg costs with getting your medical history from your home country, interpretation of them (possibility you’ll need an interpreter at appointments), you’ve not paid in to the system up until the point you arrive. Other / all countries have this type of system - the UK isn’t unique.

It's a cash grab plain and simple. If it wasn't, immigrants could opt out of it and get private health insurance instead. It also wouldn't have increased by around 500% in a few years if it was actually based on cost. In France, immigrants are entitled to healthcare after 3 months of paying taxes, and have to get private health insurance to cover those the three months they're not entitled. The UK could easily do that. In most countries, they operate an insurance system, so the immigrant has to pay in exactly the same as everyone else and gets the same benefits as everyone else.

In the UK, I could be working and paying taxes for 5 years (i.e. infinitely longer than any British person when they make their first use of NHS services they've contributed nothing towards) and still have to pay a 'surcharge' because I'm on an immigrant visa. It's simply BS that that is in any way justified. It's just a cash grab by a far right party that realised that they can treat immigrants like shit, and not only would no-one give a shit, they'd actively revel in it. Hell, they even tried to charge it to NHS workers at first, until they realised the optics didn't look quite right.

And it is twice, because if I'm paying an NHS surcharge, but then also getting charged NI on my salary, which is supposed to pay for the NHS, then I'm effectively paying twice for the same thing.

 

[Streetsweeper]

Unfortunately there are starving people all over the world ( mainly due to badly run countries who take money in charity and waste it) are we to fund the rest of world? And/or bring them all over here?

If only it were that simple. It isn’t.

 

[Don Karleone]

I think that puts to bed whether or not it was an inside job or not. Good people we have running the country, again.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Why? Why should someone working and paying tax have to pay twice just because they're an immigrant?

because people with a certain mindset think they should - they probably also moan about delays in medical treatment access

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

The world has gone mad ;-)

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

Not when you’re (incorrectly) referencing the cost of hospitals, which the last Labour government wasted many, many billions of pounds on.

It’s a specific and relevant comment.

Plus the fact that I’ll happily admit that the Rwanda scheme was a terrible waste of money.

But , of course, the Conservatives (who introduced PFI) and reintroduced it in 2012 (after it had been discontinued by Labour ) won't have wasted a penny on it will they?

 

[blueinsa]

But , of course, the Conservatives (who introduced PFI) and reintroduced it in 2012 (after it had been discontinued by Labour ) won't have wasted a penny on it will they?

Did you sleep through the Blair/Brown years then?

Reeves wouldn’t go full PFI would she?

How awkward would that be for you to defend?