The UK will host the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November 2020 in Glasgow. In the run up, Chatham House is organizing a monthly briefing series targeted to:

• The diplomatic service based in London, in particular, staff of the London embassies who are reporting on climate change issues.
• Senior UK government civil servants, officials and politicians engaged in climate change.
• Academics, experts, business representatives and NGOs.

The first briefing in the series focuses on the results from COP25 held in Madrid in December 2019 and what this means for 2020.

This briefings series offer an opportunity to discuss, in an informal setting, the most pressing and complex climate issues of the day with UK and international government officials and experts.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has declared that she wants Europe to become ‘the first climate-neutral continent by 2050’, and in December 2019, the Commission presented the European Green Deal in order to achieve this objective. However, even though greenhouse gas emissions from the EU have fallen by more than 20 per cent since 1990, the Union remains the third largest emitter in the world, after the United States and China.

What are the opportunities and challenges for raising climate ambition in Europe?  Will the EU increase its Nationally Determined Contribution and what impact might this have globally? How might Brexit affect climate action in the EU and the UK?  The second event in the Chatham House COP26 Diplomatic Briefing Series will address these critical questions.

The Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief estimated that in 2015, 61 million people experienced serious health-related suffering (SHS) that could have been ameliorated by palliative care. A large proportion of this burden – more than 80 per cent – fell on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) despite an essential package of palliative care and pain relief services being cost-effective and affordable. As the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) argues, there cannot be UHC without palliative care and thus, closing this coverage gap should be a top priority for the global UHC movement.

The Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, building on the momentum of the Lancet Commission, is hosting a roundtable focused on the global unmet need for palliative care and effective pain relief. The primary purpose of this roundtable is to convene leading experts, palliative care service users and advocates with key figures from the UHC movement and global health to highlight the importance of prioritizing this vital part of the continuum of care in UHC reform processes. The roundtable will serve as a scholarly discourse in translating the recommendations of the Lancet Commission into concrete actions, focusing on the political and economic dimensions.

England and Australia are considered standard-bearers of universal access to health services, with the former’s National Health Service (NHS) recognized as a global brand and the latter’s Medicare seen as a leader in the Asia-Pacific region. However, through the exclusion of migrant and refugee groups, each is failing to deliver true universality in their health services. These exclusions breach both their own national policies and of international commitments they have made.

While the marginalization of mobile populations is not a new phenomenon, in recent years there has been a global increase in anti-migrant rhetoric, and such health care exclusions reflect a global trend in which undocumented migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are denied rights.

They are also increasingly excluded in the interpretation of phrases such as ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘universal health coverage’, commonly used by UN bodies and member states, despite explicit language in UN declarations that commits countries to include mobile groups.

Giving all people – including undocumented migrants and asylum seekers – access to health care is essential not just for the health of the migrant groups but also the public health of the populations that host them. In a world with almost one billion people on the move, failing to take account of such mobility leaves services ill-equipped and will result in missed early and preventative treatment, an increased burden on services and a susceptibility to the spread of infectious disease.

England

While in the three other nations of the UK, the health services are accountable to the devolved government, the central UK government is responsible for the NHS in England, where there are considerably greater restrictions in access.

Undocumented migrants and refused asylum seekers are entitled to access all health care services if doctors deem it clinically urgent or immediately necessary to provide it. However, the Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policies towards undocumented migrants, implemented aggressively and without training for clinical staff, are leading to the inappropriate denial of urgent and clearly necessary care.

One example is the case of Elfreda Spencer, whose treatment for myeloma was delayed for one year, allowing the disease to progress, resulting in her death.

In England, these policies, which closely link health care and immigration enforcement, are also deterring people from seeking health care they are entitled to. For example, medical bills received by migrants contain threats to inform immigration enforcement of their details if balances are not cleared in a certain timeframe. Of particular concern, the NGO Maternity Action has demonstrated that such a link to immigration officials results in the deterrence of pregnant women from seeking care during their pregnancy.

Almost all leading medical organizations in the United Kingdom have raised concerns about these policies, highlighting the negative impact on public health and the lack of financial justification for their implementation. Many have highlighted that undocument migrants use just and estimated 0.3% of the NHS budget and have pointed to international evidence that suggests that restrictive health care policies may cost the system more.

Australia

In Australia, all people who seek refuge by boat are held, and have their cases processed offshore in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Nauru, at a cost of almost A$5 billion between 2013 and 2017. Through this international agreement, in place since 2013, Australia has committed to arrange and pay for the care for the refugees, including health services ‘to a standard of care broadly comparable to that available to the general Australian community under the public health system’.

However, the standard of care made available to the refugees is far from comparable to that available to the general population in Australia. Findings against the current care provision contractor on PNG, Pacific International Hospital, which took over in the last year, are particularly damning.

For instance, an Australian coroner investigating the 2014 death from a treatable leg infection of an asylum seeker held in PNG concluded that the contractor lacked ‘necessary clinical skills’, and provided ‘inadequate’ care. The coroner’s report, issued in 2018, found the company had also, in other cases, denied care, withheld pain relief, distributed expired medication and had generally poor standards of care, with broken or missing equipment and medication, and services often closed when they were supposed to be open.

This has also been reiterated by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which has appealed to the Australian government to end its policies of offshore processing immediately, due to health implications for asylum seekers. This echoes concerns of the medical community around the government’s ongoing attempts to repeal the ‘Medivac’ legislation, which enables emergency medical evacuation from PNG and Nauru.

Bad policy

Both governments have signed up to UN Sustainable Development Goals commitment to ‘safe and orderly migration’, an essential component of which is access to health care. The vision for this was laid out in a global action plan on promoting the health of refugees and migrants, agreed by member states at the 2019 World Health Assembly.

However, rather than allow national policies to be informed by such international plans and the evidence put forward by leading health professionals and medical organizations, the unsubstantiated framing of migrants as a security risk and economic burden has curtailed migrant and refugee access to health care.

The inclusion of migrants and refugees within universal access to health services is not merely a matter of human rights. Despite being framed as a financial burden, ensuring access for all people may reduce costs on health services through prevention of costly later-stage medical complications, increased transmission of infections and inefficient administrative costs of determining eligibility.

Thailand provides an example of a middle-income country that recognized this, successfully including all migrants and refugees in its health reforms in 2002. Alongside entitling all residents to join the universal coverage scheme, the country also ensured that services were ‘migrant friendly’, including through the provision of translators. A key justification for the approach was the economic benefit of ensuring a healthy migrant population, including the undocumented population.

The denial of quality health services to refugees and undocumented migrants is a poor policy choice. Governments may find it tempting to gain political capital through excluding these groups, but providing adequate access to health services is part of both governments’ commitments made at the national and international levels. Not only are inclusive health services feasible to implement and good for the health of migrants and refugees, in the long term, they are safer for public health and may save money.

Only a few months into 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has presented a huge challenge for China’s ruling party against an already tumultuous 12 months of economic slowdown coupled with an increasingly hostile international environment. The crisis looks set to worsen a deteriorating relationship between the US and China as the two countries battle to avoid further economic ramifications. It has also undermined President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic political legitimacy and economic growth.

The panellists will examine the wider geopolitical fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and discuss China’s future economic planning. How will the COVID-19 outbreak further strain the US-China relationship? What effect will this have on global trade and vulnerable supply chains at a time when cooperation is needed more than ever? And to what extent is the ruling party addressing growing concerns over job losses, wealth inequality and a lack of social mobility?

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations and selected giving circles of Chatham House. If you'd like to attend, please RSVP to Linda Bedford.