Jeffrey Titford (IND/DEM). – Mr President, this report is seriously advocating that cross-border healthcare should become a reality under the Services Directive. It states that ‘Member States should treat residents of another Member State on an equal basis with regard to access to health services, regardless of whether they are private or public patients’. It also states that there should be ‘a codification of existing case law on the reimbursement of cross-border healthcare’.

Let us be clear exactly what these two statements mean as far as Britain is concerned. The first is saying that a visitor or migrant from another EU country, who has not paid a bean towards the cost of the National Health Service, should be entitled to the same access to healthcare as a British resident who has been paying tax and national insurance all his or her working life, and means a delay in their treatment. The second statement opens the door for the EU to override national governments and lay down the law on how cross-border healthcare is reimbursed, leading inevitably to how healthcare as a whole is funded and managed. A single healthcare system run by the EU is a nightmare too horrible to contemplate; it should never be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.