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Former editor issues call to arms over UK health deal
Valerie Cottle worked as a journalist and editor on numerous Manx publications from 1966, when she first came to live in the Island, till her retirement in 2001.
'Now,' she says, 'I try to emerge from my garden only when I feel extremely strongly about something, and I feel extremely strongly about this.'
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Come on – we CAN fight this!
As I write this article, down at Westminster the MP for Thurrock, Andrew MacKinlay, is asking the Secretary of State for Justice whether he has had discussions with the Department of Health on the implications for the Manx population of the proposed cancellation of the Reciprocal Health Agreement.
It's good to know that somebody, somewhere, is fighting for us over this issue...
A recent contributor to Isle of Man Newspapers online declared: 'The Isle of Man is a flea on an elephant's back – not a lot we can do if it decides to roll over for a scratch.'
Am I right in thinking that the Manx flea, aka the Council of Ministers, is now lying on its back under the UK's wounded elephant, wiggling its legs and crying 'Freedom to Flourish!' until it receives the coup de grce from that great clunking foot?
I hope not, but that's what it looks like at the moment.
This may not be the time to seek long-term guarantees of our rights, but that should not stop Manx politicians from standing up to fight for the people who elected them. The UK is cutting our share of VAT receipts because it is desperate for money, and because it can.
But the arbitrary ending of the Reciprocal Health Agreement is another matter altogether, with minutely small financial implications for the UK, but with huge unfairness and, potentially, massive damage to the Island's economic survival.
According to the 2006 interim census, only 47.6 per cent of Manx residents were actually born here; however, 93.9 per cent were born within the British Isles, the overwhelming majority of them in mainland UK.
Thousands of 'new residents' poured in during the closing decades of the 20th century – the great majority not rich tax-dodgers, despite the stereotype, but simply people who wanted to make their lives in this peaceful and beautiful place. We came on the understanding that we would lose no basic rights in doing so, and most maintained close ties with families in the UK.
Now, so great is the anger and alarm about the proposed ending of the agreement that some people are already planning to leave rather than face being 'marooned' here.
Manx-born residents are no less affected, with almost all of them having children, friends and relations they want to keep in touch with 'across'.
A former senior DHSS civil servant wrote to the Examiner (December 1) suggesting that the agreement was 'an irrelevant subterfuge' because under an unwritten convention any medical emergency had to be treated without charge until the patient either died or was sufficiently recovered to be discharged from hospital.
Arguments will rage over when an 'emergency' ends. There are some 170 different Hospital Trusts in England alone; what chance of their behaving consistently over this?
And in a different context, when asked to report, and charge, illegal immigrants seeking medical attention, UK doctors have already said they are clinicians, not immigration officials, and have refused the responsibility.
But come April 1, no Manx resident crossing to the UK will be able to risk it without medical insurance.
After Christmas we will see a flurry of publicity for medical insurance schemes, comprehensive enough to cover travellers both from and into the Isle of Man up to the age of 90.
But not everyone will be able to afford insurance and, of course, these are commercial initiatives dependent on adequate profits being generated; if take-up is not sufficient, they could be discontinued overnight.
It is absolutely scandalous that we should accept this state of affairs. Dawn Primarolo has already been replaced as Justice Minister by Michael Wills. Has the Council of Ministers lobbied every MP at Westminster to point out the enormous difference in social composition between the Isle of Man and Jersey and Guernsey, where only hugely rich new residents are allowed to buy their way in?
As Ian Jack wrote perceptively in the Guardian a few weeks ago: 'So much about the Isle of Man seems sympathetic to ordinary aspiration and, if you like, to ordinary people.'
Andrew MacKinlay has urged Manx residents to get their friends and relations in the UK to write to their MPs. My partner, who is a UK-resident, got his MP to write to Dawn Primarolo several months ago; she answered that the Reciprocal Health Agreeement was 'not in the best interests of the UK taxpayer'.
Why, then, is it in the interests of the UK taxpayer to have Reciprocal Health Agreements in place with Anguila, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the British Virgin Islands, Croatia, the Falkland Islands, Georgia, Gibraltar, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montserrat, New Zealand, Russia, St Helena, Serbia and Montenegro, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uzbekistan and the Ukraine?
Efforts are being made, I gather, to negotiate Reciprocal Health Agreements with the devolved authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, who have shown themselves more sympathetic to the Island, but this can only be done with the legal say-so of Westminster.
David Kermode put your correspondent's online remark about the elephant and the flea more elegantly, if less pithily, in his book Offshore Island Politics, observing: 'The major drawback to the current relationship with the UK is the lack of any constitutional or political guarantee that Manx rights will be observed.'
Come on, let's fight for our rights!
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IF you, like Isle of Man Newspapers, agree with Val Cottle, then you can get your message across by emailing either Jack Straw or Michael Wills expressing your support for Andrew MacKinlay in his campaign to keep the reciprocal agreement. Here are their email addresses:
For Jack Straw, Secretary of State for Justice, email secofstate@justice.gsi.gov.uk
For Michael Wills, Minister of State for Justice, email warren.seddon@justice.gsi.gov.uk
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WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Send your comments to newsviews@newsiom.co.im
YOUR COMMENTS
It is increasingly looking like this is simply a "sanction" against the IOM for being (perceived) as an offshore tax haven.
IT GUY
Whilst I have no reason to disagree with what Val Cottle et al is saying I hope she and anyone else pursuing this will be careful what they wish for.
ANDY, Onchan
Everyone should fight as hard as they can to maintain the reciprocal health agreement with England. Many do not seem to realise how vital it is because they think they are covered with an annual travel insurance policy. However, any of us could find tomorrow that we have diabetes, heart problems, cancer or some other serious illness and travel insurance would then become so expensive that it is prohibitive and we become a prisoner on our Island. Also any elderly relatives in England or those with pre-existing health conditions will find they can no longer come to the Isle of Man to visit family, as travel insurance is too costly. Please, please take a minute of your time to send e-mails to those Valerie Cottle has listed in her article asking for reconsideration and giving valid reasons why.
MARGARET BROWN
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Weather for Isle of Man
Tuesday 07 February 2012
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