Justin Welby should be ashamed of himself

A while ago, I noticed that what most incensed people about the 50,000-plus asylum seekers/illegal migrants currently occupying 400 hotels in the UK was not just that it is costing the taxpayer more than £6 million every day to feed and accommodate them, although many believe such sums would be better spent housing our own veterans who sleep rough. Nor was it that the number of migrants being put up in private accommodation has increased 20-fold in the last three years. No, what really caused the most bad feeling was an apparently minor detail: GPs were paying house-calls once a week to asylum hotels. 

The contrast with what ordinary families, who have paid into the system all their lives, can expect in terms of prompt medical attention was stark. Black humour is the first resort of Britons who perceive they are getting a raw deal. Suddenly, there were loads of quips online about the only way you could get to see a GP: fly to France, hop aboard an inflatable at Calais, land in the UK, having discarded your passport along the way, and claim to be a victim of modern slavery. 

Behind the jokes lay a deep sense of unfairness. Perhaps that’s why I feel so angry with Justin Welby. I could cheerfully bop the nitwit on the mitre. In the House of Lords, the Archbishop of Canterbury attacked the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill, claiming it was “morally unacceptable”.  He also pointed out that Jesus taught us to “welcome the stranger”. 

And what would Jesus have thought of the vast fortunes being made by vile people traffickers? Or of the cynical adult male migrants who claim to be children and take a place alongside vulnerable teenagers in a secondary school? (Between 2016 and 2022, there were 7,900 asylum cases where age was disputed. Half, 48.5 per cent – 3,833 individuals – were later found to be adults. Border officials are pretty much obliged to accept their stories even when the “child” in question has facial hair and a deep voice.) 

Of these evils, the Archbishop seemingly has no opinion. With a blithe naivety, he thinks that the Government is wicked for trying to control our borders. In the gospel according to St Justin, everyone who boards a small boat to cross the Channel is a helpless victim, made in the image of a loving God, even when they are paying large sums to jump the queue and join their uncle’s flourishing cocaine business in Tottenham. 

I guess Welby thinks such cynicism is unChristian, although cynicism is more than justified by the evidence. Extending charity to all can end up denying charity to anyone. Living within the peachy purlieus of Lambeth Palace, it may have escaped the Archbishop’s attention that there is a vast crisis in the UK’s public services, which has been exacerbated by mass immigration. Millions can’t get to see a doctor. The housing and rental situation is so bad that new census figures reveal that more than half of adults aged 24 and under live at home with their parents. A considerable number of older fledglings may never fly the nest to start a family of their own with vast, knock-on consequences for our economy. 

I would think more of the Archbishop if his moral imagination allowed him to care more about his flock who are here and are suffering. Might I suggest he reads an excellent paper, “From the Channel to Rwanda: Three essays on the morality of asylum” from the think tank Policy Exchange? One contributor is Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, a Catholic priest and former Anglican bishop who, for my money, is a far superior theologian to Archbishop Welby. 

Government policy, Nazir-Ali says, “must take account of many different factors, including the impact of large-scale immigration on social cohesion, on social, educational and medical services and on physical infrastructure, such as roads and railways”. It’s not acceptable for people smugglers to nullify policy “in a democratic and law respecting nation”. 

Quite so. According to Welby, the more than 40 per cent of British people who support the Government getting tough on small boats (only 20 per cent oppose) are apparently immoral. As someone who spent some of the holiday weekend trying to source scarce medical care in our overburdened NHS for frightened people in pain, that is frankly insulting. God knows I’m not unChristian, Archbishop. 

How to cut a backlog

The strike action by doctors and nurses is estimated to have seen 500,000 operations and appointments cancelled. That’s at a time when the hospital waiting list is officially 7.2 million, but likely to be concealing the NHS’s guilty secret: a waiting list to get on the waiting list. No wonder a surgeon tells me that “self-pay” patients are at unprecedented levels. The cars in the car parks of private hospitals are no longer just those of the wealthy. 

It made me so happy to hear a story from Serbia where staff at the country’s second largest medical institution set about clearing their backlog with a will. “After 100 days of work and 12 consecutive working weekends, the doctors at the Clinic for Cardiovascular Surgery of the Nis University Clinical Center managed to achieve their goal, to eliminate waiting lists for operations,” reported a Serbian newspaper. Associate Professor Mladan Golubovic said they came up with the idea for “human motives”. Doctors had received information from the call centre that “a couple of patients they called for surgery had died in the meantime”. News of those avoidable deaths stung medics into action. 

A team of doctors and nurses proposed to work every weekday, including evenings, and throughout weekends. The management of the clinic, as well as all the other members of staff, said that they wanted to join in. “It took twelve weeks,” reported a jubilant Professor Golubovic. The team were finally able to leave the hospital to spend Easter with their families. 

When news got out, there was an incredible response from the Serbian people. They christened the exhausted staff “Heroes of the South”. “Wherever you are, walking around the city or going to lunch, our fellow citizens are delighted,” said Prof Golubovic. 

While “NHS Heroes” (ahem) are planning their next strike action, which will only add to the scary number of weekly excess deaths, it’s uplifting to know that there are still doctors and nurses who feel they have a moral obligation to their patients. 

Bang for your buck

One of the objections to the Coronation was the stupendous expense during a cost of living crisis. So here’s my statistic of the week: by one estimate, the entire cost of crowning King Charles III would have funded five hours of the NHS. Pretty good value for such a huge boost to the nation’s sense of wellbeing, don’t you think?