Once, foreign nationals came to Britain to freeload on the NHS. Today, UK residents visit other countries for medical treatment. Last year, it has emerged, 523,000 British people went abroad for their healthcare. The top five most popular destinations were Turkey, Poland, Romania, Portugal and India.

Does this matter? Health secretary Wes Streeting seems to think so. Responding to the news, he said: ‘It is appalling that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers have been forced to go abroad for medical treatment they should be accessing for free on the NHS.’ It wasn’t clear whether this was a mea culpa that the health service he runs isn’t up to scratch, or whether he was trying to blame the Conservatives, who were in power for half the period in question.

Either way, he’s overreacting. The

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