Natasha Walter: There is a woman I know called Jane. Jane is incredible; she has survived rape and torture in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she brings up two children completely without help, she has a beautiful speaking voice and a talent for writing poetry. If I say she is a refugee you would say she was one of the lucky ones; not on a boat in the Mediterranean, not at a border in central Europe.

Churches’ Refugee Network:  HOME OFFICE CONSULTATION ON Reforming support for failed asylum seekers and other illegal migrants: 2015 CRC response

We respond to this consultation as an ecumenical network of churches engaged in ministry to asylum seekers and refugees based on our strategic location in local communities across the UK.  We believe that, in our society, collective moral concern must go alongside collective moral responsibility  –  and that Christian social and political reflection is part of the national discernment.

Our starting-point is the theological affirmation that every human being is created in God’s image.  When we treat any one with less than proper dignity and respect, we are guilty of wronging them.  This high evaluation of the worth and dignity of each human being is the indispensable context for evaluating the actions of any State, including the UK.  Each person seeking asylum is an individual, not a number, and each individual’s circumstances and claims needs proper attention. Continue reading “CRC: Reforming support for failed asylum seekers and other illegal migrants”

A QARN member writes: A destitute asylum seekers came into our project today with an invoice from a hospital for outpatient attendances with a letter that says “the above account will be referred to our debt collecting agency if payment is not made within the next seven days. This is because of new government guidance issued sometime this year:

Guidance on implementing the overseas visitor hospital charging regulations 2015

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/418634/Implementing_overseas_charging_regulations_2015.pdf

Although ‘GPs have discretion to accept any person, including overseas visitors, to be either fully registered as a measure of an NHS patient, or as a temporary resident if they are to be in an area for between 24 hours and three months. No registration application can be refused on the grounds of race, gender, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, appearance, diversity or medical condition. In reality, this means that the practice’s discretion to refuse a patient is limited. There is no minimum period that a person needs to have been in the UK before a GP can register them. Furthermore, GPs have a duty to provide free of charge treatment which they consider to be immediately necessary or emergency, regardless of whether that person is an overseas visitor or registered with that practice.’ Continue reading “Government rules require Health Service to charge destitute people”