Asylum seeker's £440,000 health bill attacked by press

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by HoldtheFrontPage Staff Published 25 Jun 2007

More than 1,000 Grimsby Telegraph readers are calling on a health authority to stop to paying for the care of a failed asylum seeker who was seriously injured in a car crash.

They were asked to fill in a coupon in the paper which said that, while sympathising with Shirwan Sabir Mahmod’s plight, they objected to the £440,000 bill being paid by the local primary care trust.

The bill is rising by £4,000 a week.

The situation came about because, at the time of the accident, the Iraqi was registered with a Grimsby GP having lived in the town under the Government’s dispersion scheme.

The story has since received national publicity and, on Monday, the town’s Labour MP Austin Mitchell tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament to further highlight what he feels is the injustice faced by the local trust.

Telegraph editor Michelle Lalor said: “We have had to be careful to tread the fine line between exposing this unfair situation and not fuelling the racism surrounding the asylum issue.

“It has been an unprecedented response. We have received more than 1,000 coupons in six days.”

They will presented to the Department of Health.

Former journalist Austin Mitchell’s Early Day Motion – a parliamentary petition – asked: “That this House, in affirming the clear principle that NHS treatment should be available for all who need it, expresses its concern at the situation in North East Lincolnshire where the primary care trust is being asked to pay the £440,000 medical bill and the £4,000 a week continuing care costs for a failed asylum seeker arising from a road traffic accident which occurred elsewhere, with treatment given elsewhere; points out that neither the trust nor his doctor were notified when he was required to leave, that the trust is not funded for this kind of case, and that such a huge bill will have a disproportionate and wholly unfair impact on a primary care trust budget already in deficit; and, in expressing its sympathy for the victim of this tragic accident, emphasises that unless the bill is paid centrally as it would have been before 1999, the result will be local anger and resentment directed against asylum seekers in general because medical services locally must suffer to pay a bill which is not a local responsibility.”

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