Examination of Witnesses (Questions 840
- 850)
TUESDAY 15 JUNE 2004
DR VIVIENNE
NATHANSON, DR
JOHN CHISHOLM
AND MR
TREVOR PHILLIPS
Q840 Bob Russell: I recognise the
powerful point that you make there but what about blood group
on identity cards?
Dr Nathanson: We would want to
ask what the advantage was in having a blood grouping.
Q841 Bob Russell: If you are knocked
down by this bus in the other town.
Dr Nathanson: If you are knocked
down by a bus and it just said that you were ABO group, which
is the common blood group, they would not in fact give you that
without actually checking it. It takes seconds to check ABO group
and what actually happens that takes longer in the lab is far
more complex than that and, although I have been a blood donor
for many years, I do not know all those complex bits about my
own. So, it is unlikely that you would actually have that information
for most people. We would have concerns, for example, about allergies.
Let us say that it said on your card that you had no allergies
and it had not been updated—and I think cards often will
not be updated—and then perhaps you might have become seriously
allergic to something fairly recently. I think doctors would be
reluctant to rely upon information on a card that was not constantly
updated. The point about the national electronic health record
is that every time you see a doctor or other healthcare worker,
it will be updated and it may in the future also, I hope, have
patients able to input data as well so that we really do mean
that it is a real time record of what is happening in the patient's
life in health terms.
Q842 Bob Russell: Mr Phillips, do
you believe that the onus should be on the Home Office to update
the information such as immigration status?
Mr Phillips: Yes. I would just
like to qualify that by saying that I do not think the immigration
status really ought to be on the card at all.
Q843 David Winnick: As regards illegal
workings, it is argued that one of the purposes of the identity
card scheme is that it would undermine to a large extent illegal
workings. We are all against what happened recently: the Morecambe
tragedy and the 58 Chinese who were suffocated trying to get here.
You make the point in your evidence that unscrupulous employers
do not check on existing documentation. So, are you saying in
effect that if they do not check on existing documentation, why
should they worry about the identity card?
Mr Phillips: You state the case
almost precisely. The case really is, does this offer a better
possibility of preventing exploitation and abuse than the current
situation? If there is no extra incentive on the employer to check
status than there is currently, there may be many other virtues
but it is rather hard to see why this would be a particular virtue
of the introduction of the scheme.
Q844 David Winnick: You stress the
importance in your evidence of, and I quote, "effective and
unbureaucratic recourse to an independent body that can investigate
practical abuse of the ID scheme by individual police officers
and other authorities at street level." You are concerned
about that because of what has happened before, stop and search
presumably?
Mr Phillips: First of all, let
me repeat what I said at the beginning. There is no evidence that
the introduction of an ID scheme internationally has been used
differentially in that way but there is certainly a clear perception
amongst ethnic minority communities that it is likely to produce
that effect and, in a sense, the perception of the introduction
of the card itself is the problem, whatever the actual outcome
will be and I would suggest that it will take some years to establish
what the fact is. The actual introduction of the card would create
a great deal of uneasiness within those communities. One way in
which that uneasiness might be dealt with would be for the Ombudsman
who, as I understand it, in the Bill now would essentially have
the responsibility for monitoring the Home Secretary's disclosure
but he or she would also have the duty of monitoring this kind
of thing, differential use. However, in order to do that, we would
have to have a proper system of monitoring by ethnicity which
is why I said earlier that I thought that ethnicity might be one
of the elements of biometric information that a card might need
to carry. One last point on that, if we did that of course, one
of the things that one would have to be quite careful about is
that technology could actually read. I have some experience, having
been in the television industry myself, of cameras which cannot
tell who is black and who is white or, alternatively, they cannot
see if you are black. That is my unpleasant personal experience.
Q845 David Winnick: I can understand
that. Mr Phillips, it is said that the Muslim community at the
moment are subject to some feeling of acute if not harassment
nevertheless suspicion. As we obviously all know, the overwhelming
majority Muslims are totally law abiding, no less than ourselves.
Do you feel there is a certain sensitivity with the introduction
of ID cards on that particular community bearing in mind the ever
acute danger of terrorism?
Mr Phillips: Once again, justified
or not, there would be anxiety, there would be unease within that
community, not, I would venture to say, for any reason that could
easily be articulated but there would be a sense that here is
another way perhaps of picking on a particular community and that
is really the problem here, that there is a disjunction between
what might be true and what people feel to be true and our concern
here is that what people feel might be true is what will have
an impact on community relations.
Q846 Mr Winnick: Have you been approached
by a representative of the Muslim community on this particular
point about the ID card?
Mr Phillips: It is not something
on which we ourselves have encouraged approaches yet, but we are
in the process of consulting on this very issue at the moment.
There are Muslim members of the Commission to whom I am speaking
about this and I am hoping that once we have been able to go through
that process—and we have set up a small, internal group
to listen to people and to take, not necessarily evidence but
soundings—we can probably say something more coherent.
Q847 Mr Winnick: I wonder, Mr Phillips,
arising from what you have just said, whether you could send us
a note that you consider would be useful for us to have when we
are considering our draft report?
Mr Phillips: We are very happy
to do so[2]
Q848 Mr Winnick: I do not know when
you are meeting but it would need to be in the next couple of
weeks, really.
Mr Phillips: If you tell us what
your timetable is we will endeavour to meet it.
Dr Chisholm: Could I just make
one point which has not come out in the questioning? We touched
on professional resistance to the idea that doctors will be forced
to refuse treatment to patients genuinely in need but unable to
afford payment, we have touched on the importance of protecting
public health and preventing the spread of infectious diseases,
but there is one other issue which is that we are concerned about
the possibility of doctors being required to pass on information
about ineligible applicants to third parties, such as the police
or the Home Office, which would, I think, deter people from seeking
the care that they need. We would, I think, very much seek assurances
that doctors would not be placed in that position of being required
to pass on information.
Q849 Mr Winnick: That is a very valid
point, indeed, and I am glad you have made it. Is there a final
point you want to make, Dr Nathanson, Mr Phillips?
Mr Phillips: The only final point
I would make is evidence: we need evidence of what is likely to
happen here, so monitoring is, in our view, a sine que non
here.
Q850 Mr Winnick: Can I thank the
three of you for coming along? It has been very useful indeed.
Mr Phillips: Thank you.
2 See Ev 316-317. Back
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