The UK has announced a “significant” increase in the fees and health surcharge paid by visa applicants from all over the globe, including Indians, toward the UK’s publicly financed National Health Service (NHS). Medical professionals expressed their “appalling” disapproval of the plan announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, saying that it will result in migrants paying twice as much to utilize the NHS.
The British Indian leader, who was under pressure to accept the findings of an independent study of compensation for teachers, police officers, junior physicians, and other public sector employees, confirmed an increase of between 5 and 7% across the board. He emphasized that this, however, would not be addressed with further government borrowing out of concern about further igniting high inflation, and that the expenses would have to be found somewhere else.
Sunak told reporters at a Downing Street press conference: “If we’re going to prioritize paying public sector workers more, that money has to come from somewhere else because I’m not prepared to put people’s taxes up and I don’t think it would be responsible or right to borrow more because that would just make inflation worse.”
“So, to locate this money, we’ve done two things. The first is that we will raise the fees we charge foreign nationals who enter this country for visas and for something known as the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), which is a fee they must pay to use the NHS, he added.
Why did Rishi Sunak make the fee increase public?
The decision by Rishi Sunak to raise the fees and surcharge follows a junior doctors’ strike in the UK. In what is believed to be the longest single period of industrial action in the history of the health care, the physicians conducted a five-day strike. When inflation is taken into account, the physicians claim that compensation has dropped by more than a quarter since 2008 and that many doctors are becoming burned out due to an increased workload.
In contrast to the 5 percent salary increase that had been offered, physicians wanted a 35 percent increase. Sunak said in his pay announcement that his offer was “final” and that more labor unrest would not affect his decision. There won’t be any more salary negotiations. No amount of strikes will make us reconsider our decision to forgo further discussions over this year’s settlements. Instead, the agreement we achieved today provides a just means of putting an end to the strikes. A fair bargain for the British taxpayer as well as for the employees, he said.
What will Indians be required to pay?
The government intends to raise work visa costs by 15%, according to a FREETH report. The cost of every other visa will increase by at least 20%.
As a result, you must pay £718 (about 77,147) if you want to immigrate to the UK on a skilled worker visa and a certificate of sponsorship has been given for three years or less. The current charge for this kind of visa is £625.
The first immigration health surcharge, which started out at £200 per application in 2005, quadrupled to £400 in 2018 before increasing again to £624 for adults in 2020. The UK Home Office is anticipated to announce all the specifics of which visa categories will see increases and when the new, higher rates will go into effect in the next months.
Why is the increase under fire?
The decision would result in migrants paying twice as much to use the NHS, according to physicians in Unite, a group that advocates for young physicians, general practitioners, and hospital consultants. The majority of UK workers have their National Insurance payments withheld from their paychecks at the source, which funds the National Health Service as well as state pension and unemployment programs.
“Migrants contribute to the support of the NHS via general taxes just as other employees do. The NHS premium should not be doubled to more than £1,200 ($1,570) annually, according to Doctors in Unite.
“Migrants are effectively ‘taxed twice’ to access the same service,” it said, branding the action “immoral and divisive,” according to AFP. Praxis, a charity for refugees and migrants, said that politicians were using non-UK citizens as “cash cows” at a time when they were already having trouble paying for expensive visa renewal costs.
