Johnny Foreigner's days taking advantage of are over. You've saved our lives, now fork over the cash

While we’re at it, let’s extend the health surcharge to other parts of our lives. If your immigrant plumber shows up on time and fixes your radiator, charge him for having the cheek to keep his word

As a nation, we promised we would never forget the heroic contribution of our medical staff in these bleak times. And we’re keeping our promise, by remembering to charge all the foreign ones £624, as a surcharge for being able to work here.

This is an increase from £400, so we can honestly say we’ve put some thought into it, we’re not just taking them for granted.

Many commentators suggested we would see a different Boris Johnson, once he came out of hospital, having been cared for by a Portuguese nurse. Newspaper columnists told us "he will clearly be transformed, following such a brush with death". And this turned out to be true. He's changed so much, he might as well have said, "I’ve never considered these people before, but as they saved my life I’ll charge the bastards five hundred and sixty-four quid" when the government doubled down on the plans.

Because these foreign nurses are taking us for mugs. They work in hospitals, which means they’re more likely to get the virus. Then, when they catch it, we have to pay for them out of taxpayers’ money to get other foreign nurses to look after them.

They probably come over here on purpose, so they can catch the virus, knowing they can enjoy the luxury of our bedsheets.

So it’s the duty of every patient to ask if the nurse treating them is coming over here expecting our handouts. This may be difficult if you’re on a ventilator, but if you can, you must try to summon up enough breath to say "I hope you paid for this wonderful opportunity we’ve given you to save my life, you scrounger."

The government prides itself on its Christian values, so maybe it devised this policy with respect for the story of the Good Samaritan. This is the tale told by Jesus, in which a man who has been beaten is helped off the road and given an inn for the night, by a Samaritan. The man clasps the Samaritan’s hand and says "thank you, my friend, for your kindness has saved me. Thus shall I reward you" and he gives the Samaritan a bill for £624 quid for coming over here to Jericho, where we’re already at breaking point without more of the spongers.

It would take a care worker, earning the living wage, 70 hours to pay this surcharge. But they will be clapped regularly throughout these 70 hours, and every time they save someone’s life, an official from the Department of Health will pop round to bang a Tupperware bowl with a wooden spoon.

What seems especially unfair, is that we’re far more generous in sending people in the other direction. The British people who go and retire in France or Spain are all young, lithe, thin and unlikely to need any medical attention for 50 years.

Maybe we should set up little neutral territories, like embassies, through hospital wards. That way, the bed, with a British patient on it, can be part of the UK. But the area outside the bed where the staff potter about is abroad, where these doctors and cleaners can’t expect to receive our over-generous handouts.

Look at the amount of protective medical equipment these foreign medical workers were demanding, when there are plenty of British people who don’t have any protective medical gowns at all, the excuse being they don’t need them as much as hospital workers, because they work in the garden equipment section of Homebase.

Luckily, we saw through this scam, saving money for the NHS by not sending enough of it out so lots of staff had to make their own.

This is why Britain has never had a space programme. If we were sending someone to the moon, we’d tell the astronauts "your spacesuit isn’t ready I’m afraid, but never mind, you can make one out of bin liners’."

Thankfully, the days when we allowed ourselves to be taken advantage of are over, when immigrants could exploit EU rules to pour in here doing things that desperately needed doing.

Now we can use similar rules to the NHS surcharge. If the only plumber you can find is Polish, after he’s stopped your radiator flooding the kitchen, you can charge him £624 for having the cheek to come round when you asked him to.

This is like how we ended up with a scheme called Pick for Britain, which was set up because, after years

of complaining about Poles and Romanians coming here to pick our fruit, now there aren’t any Poles and Romanians to do it.

Typical of the lazy bastards. Look at them, staying over there, not taking our jobs. They’re stitching us up.

Eventually, the same process will happen in the NHS. The tough new measures to protect British jobs will mean there are fewer foreign medical staff, so Prince Charles will have to make an appeal to "Operate for Britain". Then anyone who’s short of cash can apply on a special website and pop into a general hospital to whip someone’s appendix out, to make a few bob to tide them over through the summer.

Then we can introduce a more comprehensive price list for foreigners who think they can get away with coming here to get us out of trouble.

When a crew of a lifeboat rescues someone, they should all have their papers checked, and if any of them are foreign, they have to pay £624. The man who stopped a terrorist on London Bridge last year was South African, so he should be charged £624 quid for each person he saved, and let that be a lesson to him.

We’re getting our country back at last.