UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said that the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) in the UK will see a large increase in the fees and health surcharge that visa applicants, including Indians, must pay. To keep pace with the nation’s public sector salary increase, this increase is intended.
A raise of 5 to 7 percent has been confirmed by Sunak for several public sector jobs, including those of teachers, police officers, and junior doctors. However, he highlighted that due to worries about inflation, the government would neither raise taxes nor take out new loans to pay for these rises.
“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 up people’s taxes and I don’t think it would be responsible or right to borrow more because that would just make inflation worse,” Mr. Sunak told reporters at a Downing Street press conference.
“So, what we have done are two things to find this money. The first is, we are going to increase the charges that we have for migrants who are coming to this country when they apply for visas and indeed something called the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS), which is the levy that they pay to access the NHS,” he said adding, “All of those fees are going to go up and that will raise over GBP 1 billion, so across the board visa application fees are going to go up significantly and similarly for the IHS.
“As a second measure to cover the higher wage bill, government departments will be asked to reprioritize their spending. This does not entail job cuts or reductions in services but rather a shift in focus towards different priorities.”
Strikes at schools and hospitals have occurred as a result of intense pressure and disagreements over public sector salaries placed on the Rishi Sunak-led Conservative Party government.
For instance, junior doctors in England began a five-day strike on Thursday after having their demand for a 35 percent salary hike denied.
Sunak said that his salary offer was definitive and that additional labor unrest would not change the outcome.
“There will be no more talks on pay. We will not negotiate again on this year’s settlements and no amount of strikes will change our decision. Instead, the settlement we’ve reached today gives us a fair way to end the strikes. A fair deal for workers and a fair deal for the British taxpayer,” he said.
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