Richard Tice and the NHS Queue-Jump Misinformation Rage Bait

Political and media manipulation is turning vulnerable groups into convenient scapegoats, argues The Bear

A busy corridor in an NHS hospital. Photo: Lankowsky/Alamy

If there’s one thing that troubles me more than blatant misinformation about healthcare, it’s the outright weaponisation of it to inflame public anger.

Richard Tice’s comments on X/Twitter last month, referring to a Telegraph article about undocumented migrants receiving “fast track NHS care”, were not only wildly misleading but part of a broader pattern of deliberate distortion by the usual sections of the media. Since the beginning of the year, headlines from the likes of GB News, The Daily Express and The Telegraph have worked overtime to create a false narrative: that the NHS is bending over backwards to serve migrants at the expense of British taxpayers.

It’s rage bait, pure and simple, designed to provoke resentment without offering any sort of nuance or fact-based analysis.

Let’s start with the claim itself. Tice and his media amplifiers focus on the 987 Inclusion Pathway in London, a programme designed to fast-track access to urgent care for vulnerable groups, including the homeless, drug and alcohol-dependent individuals, and undocumented migrants. What’s conveniently omitted is that these programmes are not about “queue-jumping” or preferential treatment, but about addressing health inequalities for groups who are often excluded from the healthcare system altogether.