£50 Million per Year: What Translation Services Cost the NHS
January 6, 2009 by BNP News
Filed under National News
British taxpayers cough up some £50 million per year for translation services provided to foreign scroungers parasiting off the country’s National Health Service, it has been revealed.
The money is used by hospitals and GP surgeries to translate and interpret dozens of languages including Urdu, Arabic, Sylheti, Bengali, Polish and Spanish.
The money could, of course, be far better used to treat British people, who have provided the public funding in the first place.
A spokesman for the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “At a time when the NHS is not giving ordinary taxpayers access to doctors’ appointments and access to the right drugs to treat their ailments this is a disproportionate allocation of precious funding.”
The worst offender was Manchester Primary Care Trust which spent £1.3 million, while Heart of Birmingham PCT spent £1.2 million. Pennine Acute Hospitals forked out £1 million.
The Health Service translates its services into 160 languages. Some, such as Akan and Cherokee, do not have a single registered speaker in the UK.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “NHS trusts have a duty to produce a race equality scheme under the Race Relations Act 1976 (Statutory Duties) Order 2001.
“That scheme must contain, among other things, arrangements for ensuring public access to information and the trust’s services.”
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