Muammar Al Khadafi

North Bristol NHS Trust, currently facing cutbacks of £28 million and the loss of over 400 jobs, has spent £2.4 million on treating foreign patients who are not eligible for free NHS care.

The trust, which covers Southmead and Frenchay hospitals, admitted to the huge scale of spending on 'health tourists' in an answer to a Freedom of Information request.

Since 2003 they have billed foreign patients who were not eligible for free health care a total of £2.4 million - and have succeeded in recovering on £688,000 of that from the patients, leaving £1,732,000 spent out on foreign patients with no entitlement to free treatment, a sum which is not likely to be recovered.

A question in Parliament revealed that, across Britain, £35.4 million had been written off as unrecoverable, a figure which beggars belief considering the huge cutbacks which our NHS is facing.

Chris Skidmore, Tory MP for Kingswood, said that "In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of foreign nationals, ineligible for free care, who have been using NHS services".

Indeed there has been, and if we wondered why - apart from our lax border controls of course - a spokesman for North Bristol NHS Trust spells it out.

"Refusing patients medical treatment when they need it would be unacceptable. We have procedures in place to recover the cost of that treatment but unfortunately, due to the often transient nature of this category of patients, repeated attempts are, in many cases, unsuccessful".

Of course. Those presenting themselves for free treatment know that they've a very good chance of getting away with never paying, so they take a chance. The odds are good they'll get away with it, the odds are that even if they turned up owing money we'd still treat them.

Britain has become a focal point for health tourists from all over the world - and it's all of us that keep picking up the bill, even whilst we ourselves suffer under an NHS which is being forced to cut back services and staff in order to save money.