Indian minister: Brits better off flying to India than relying on NHS
India’s commerce minister has said that there are instances where Brits would be better off hopping on a flight to India than braving NHS treatment.
In a discussion with Science Museum chief Sir Ian Blatchford at the India Global Forum (IGF) conference, Piyush Goyal said the UK should be more open to cooperation with India to take strain off the NHS.
Goyal pointed to dental care, a point of particular strain on the health service for Brits: “If you need a dentist appointment today, you may actually end up getting one after a month.”
He said: “If you need a serious heart surgery, you may not get one in 24 hours. It may take you longer.
“Whereas India, a nine hour flight away, can actually, including all the cost of travel and any other costs that may be incurred, provide you all of these services whenever the NHS is long with queues.”
Outsourcing remains politically contentious in the UK, but Goyal argued that the UK and India could cooperate without costing British jobs – especially in light of the recently signed trade deal between the two countries.
“We can help provide that at a fraction of the cost, much smarter and better without causing any job losses in the UK.”
“In fact, again, only supplementing and complementing the effort so that the citizens of the United Kingdom and the residents of the UK live a healthier and happier life.”
He added: “But we will need to have a political environment in which one can discuss these things, or even partially start looking at only those areas where we can cooperate without – at all, I can guarantee you – hurting any jobs or any elements of your local industry.”
Do Brits fear technology?
Goyal said that reform of the health service has become “too much of a political hot potato” in the UK, an issue that “all of us in democracies face”.
Blatchford said that “one of the key things in medicine is about really understanding Big Data and its implications for our lives”.
But he suggested there is a tendency in the UK to worry about modern technologies, particularly as they relate to healthcare.
He referenced an anecdote from former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at a breakfast meeting earlier in the conference: “In Britain, 60 per cent of people are very anxious about artificial intelligence, and in India, 60 per cent of people are really excited about it.”