Warning to MPs of expat health risk

A representative for Britons living in France is to warn the UK’s House of Commons next week of the burden on the NHS if expats are forced to go back to the UK because of losing healthcare rights after Brexit.

The chairman of the British Community Committee of France, Christopher Chantrey, said he will tell the House of Commons Health Committee “about the likelihood of considerable numbers of British people, especially pensioners, being forced to return to the UK if there is no agreement on future healthcare arrangements for UK citizens living in other EU member states.”

Mr Chantrey will be the only representative for Britons abroad in the oral evidence session, which will examine the effects of Brexit on the NHS. It will be the second such Brexit evidence session he has taken part in, following one in which he and others urged MPs to consider expats’ rights, notably saying that continuing annual pension uprating and compensating for the loss of the S1 scheme for pensioners’ healthcare were matters on which the UK could already make promises if it wished.

The session will be at 15.30 French time and should be viewable live at http://parliamentlive.tv/

For more background on the MPs’ ongoing enquiry into Brexit and health and social care, see: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/brexit-and-health-and-social-care-16-17/

For the previous session at the House of Commons in which Britons abroad took part see:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/b2e99ade-a611-4b9a-b5ca-87e14a0c25ae