If you’ve ever spent forty minutes redialling your surgery only to be offered an appointment in late September, The Dame may have found your answer. Her neighbours are, by and large, splendidly well-heeled foreign nationals whose entire relationship with this country consists of an intermittently occupied flat and a standing order to the Council Tax department. No income tax. No National Insurance. No skin in the game whatsoever — yet a full NHS registration awaits them, no questions asked, no proof of entitlement required.
Somewhere in NHS management, someone has decided that the optimal use of a taxpayer-funded health service is to advertise it enthusiastically to people who have never paid for it. One can only assume the same department is responsible for the booking system, since both appear designed with the same guiding principle: maximum availability for everyone except the people actually paying for it.
The Dame salutes the ingenuity. She merely wonders, gently, whether anyone in NHS management has considered checking IDs as enthusiastically as they check council tax bands.
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