It’s also important to point out that what Farage said simply isn’t true.
According to Public Health England, which collects and analyses HIV statistics, 62% of people newly infected with the virus in 2012 were born in the UK. There are almost 100,000 people living with HIV in Britain.
Of the 53,000 heterosexuals with HIV, according to Public Health England, 11,000 were African-born men and 20,700 African-born women. Levels of HIV infection in these migrant groups are lower than in their country of origin.
Nor is there evidence that visitors come to the UK purely to get HIV treatment. Few of those later diagnosed as HIV accessed testing as soon as they arrived in the UK, according to the National Aids Trust, suggesting that they did not know of their status.
A House of Commons report on HIV in 2005 found that HIV-positive migrants tended not to turn to the NHS until the disease was well advanced, usually years after they entered the UK. This, it said “would not be the expected behaviour of a cynical ‘health tourist’ who had come to the country solely to access free services”.
Until relatively recently visitors to the UK from outside the European Economic Area could be charged for HIV treatment, an anomaly to established practice that anyone with an infectious disease should be able to access NHS treatment for free.
A rule change in October 2012 extended the right to free HIV treatment to all overseas visitors regardless of nationality, including asylum-seekers, students and tourists, bringing HIV into line with diseases such as meningitis, tuberculosis, cholera, food poisoning, and malaria.
The change was defended by the coalition on the grounds that it was essential to protect public health and prevent the spread of HIV. Free treatment would encourage testing, reduce levels of late diagnosis and the spread of infection, and cost the taxpayer less in the long run.
Despite opposition from a small group of Conservative backbench MPs, the move had widespread mainstream political support. Lord Fowler, who was Margaret Thatcher’s health secretary in the 1980s, described the case for change as “overwhelming in human terms”.
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