Overstretched hospital emergency staff face having to check patients' nationalities so that "foreigners" can be charged for treatment.

Ministers in the midst of a crusade against health and safety "red tape" plan to dump a mountain of extra non-medical work on life-saving staff in their latest scapegoating of visitors from overseas.

Doctors' surgeries will also have to root out non-Britons to slap a price tag on their healthcare.

Doctors and health experts immediately slammed the plans - the latest in the Con-Dems' wider assault on the National Health Service.

British Medical Association chairman Dr Mark Porter said the potentially confusing scheme could force doctors to spend more time on paperwork and bureaucracy.

"This could mean the system of administering the new charging system will end up actually costing more to run than it collects in revenue," he said.

"There is particular confusion over access entitlements to emergency care services, given the proposals introduce charging for A&E visits yet say no patient will be turned away if they need care."

He said patients in need of treatment could be deterred.

The government claims charging foreigners will raise £500 million for the NHS.

But Health Emergency director John Lister dismissed the figure as "a joke."

He said: "The total figure for accident and emergency spending in the last year available was £2.2 billion. Are they going to save a quarter of A&E costs by charging people who are foreign?

"Bear in mind how much pressure A&E staff are already under - and then to lumber them with the administrative job of finding out who is foreign? You would have to check everybody.

"Everyone would have to produce identity documents. Clerical work is already part of the problem in accident and emergency."

He said the plan was "a massive distraction from the fact that the government has chosen to freeze and cut NHS spending."

And he warned: "If they are going to start doing this in accident and emergency and primary care, it will not be long before we are all being charged for health treatment.

"People have been receiving free health care from the NHS since it was founded. It is something we should be proud of, not undermining."

Labour Shadow Health Minister Lord Philip Hunt accused the government of trying to use doctors and nurses as "surrogate immigration officials."

The government is using an imagined influx of visitors from Bulgaria and Romania when migration restrictions are lifted on January 1 as an excuse for the scheme.

Health Minister Lord Howe said: "We know that we need to make changes across the NHS to better identify and charge visitors and migrants. Introducing charging at primary care is the first step to achieving this."