If we lose this right, the only ones celebrating will be the insurance industry. When I tweeted something about the EHIC no longer going to be available, lots of people tweeted back saying, “Ah, but we can get travel insurance”. That is all right if you are reasonably wealthy, but for ordinary people who have struggled just to get enough money to go abroad, it is an extra cost.
These arrangements are the cornerstones of the freedom of movement principle which the European Union rightly sees as its own but which the UK Government, sadly, are hell-bent on opting out of. There are those who point to the deal that the EU has with Switzerland at present. It is true that, under the Bill in the event of no deal, we would be able to implement new bilateral agreements with European Union states, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. This would be lengthy and costly, ultimately leaving the European Union without reciprocal arrangements for an unknown period. I raised this with the Minister and her counterpart in the Commons when they kindly held a briefing on it. They would be scrabbling around the European Union—indeed around the world—negotiating bilateral agreements. If the Health Secretary is as successful in doing deals as the Trade Secretary, there are going to be an awful lot of sick Britons scattered around the world for years to come.
We need to approve the Bill—of course we do; the Minister said it; the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, said it—but with some appropriate and significant amendments to Clause 2. Without it, the Secretary of State will not even be allowed to do the deals which will protect British citizens abroad. However, there should be no doubt at all that the very good arrangement which we have at present is being replaced by, at the very least, an inferior one. It remains to be seen if the operative word really is “inferior” or if, as I fear, “disastrous” is a better way to describe what we are facing if we go for no deal. I hope everyone in this House will do everything they can to ensure that that
does not happen. For the health of British expatriates and of those of us who travel overseas, it is vital that we do so.
4.21 pm