A woman who faces decades of repayments to the NHS for maternity care has lost a case in the high court challenging the government’s healthcare charging regime for migrants.
The woman, who cannot be named, brought the legal challenge along with the charity Maternity Action, which works to end inequality and improve healthcare for pregnant women.
It will come as a blow to hundreds of impoverished migrant women who are pregnant. Last year Maternity Action provided advice to 400 such women.
The woman, who had been subjected to female genital mutilation and is incurring NHS charges of £10,636 for maternity care – a debt she is paying back at £10 a month – argued that the charging regime for migrants deters, delays or denies access to healthcare for pregnant women, those giving birth or those who need postnatal treatment.
She and the charity were seeking permission to judicially review government policies but the judge, Mrs Justice Whipple, rejected the case.
Whipple said she was not granting permission for the case to proceed, not because of “a lack of sympathy” for the disadvantaged group the case applied to, but because the case had been brought out of time as it referred to charging rules introduced by the government in 2015. She could not see a legal basis for the claim, which related to matters of policy, which needed to be addressed by parliament, and not to matters of law.
The ruling came days after NHS England said that pregnant women from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds should be fast-tracked to hospital because of their increased risk from coronavirus. Research found that pregnant black women were eight times more likely to be admitted to hospital with coronavirus than pregnant white women.
Ros Bragg, the director of Maternity Action, said: “For more than 10 years, we have been asking the government to stop putting the health of destitute pregnant women at risk by charging them for essential NHS care, and we will not stop campaigning on this. We know from our research that charging deters vulnerable women from attending for maternity care, putting the lives of women and their babies at risk.
“The pandemic creates new dangers for pregnant women, and particularly for BAME women who are at greater risk of hospitalisation and death. We know from our advice service that there are women with high risk pregnancies who are avoiding maternity care out of fear of incurring a debt they cannot pay.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have always been clear that urgent treatment, including all maternity services, should never be withheld.
“We are supporting trusts to ensure these rules are fully understood and no chargeable woman is discouraged from receiving maternity care.”
In a separate case, lawyers have succeeded in increasing Home Office support for pregnant trafficked women with a £300 maternity grant they were not previously able to access and an extra weekly allowance of £3 to £5, along with a significant increase in weekly payments towards babies and young children. The increased support comes into force on Wednesday.
Shalini Patel, of Duncan Lewis solicitors, who brought the challenge which secured the increase in support, welcomed the changes. “This legal challenge will impact so many victims of trafficking who are pregnant or have children.”