For immediate release. 19/12/06

The Home Office has finally published its delayed “Identity Management Action Plan” [1]; burying it on the day that Parliament rises for Christmas.
The plan itself represents a radical shift of emphasis from ID cards to the Register and its use for data-sharing across government. The “new, clean
database” [2] promised by consecutive Home Secretaries is now replaced by a mish-mash of three old databases – each filled with inaccurate and out-of-date information and each originally built for completely different purposes – which will supposedly form a secure platform for delivering the real-time identity management of upwards of 50 million people.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s [3] National Coordinator said:

Does the Home Office think it can lie to Parliament and get away with it? The Register described during the passing of the ID cards legislation was so
different; one has to question whether the whole Act was passed under false pretences. Ministers promised a Rolls Royce, now they’re wheeling out a
banger welded together from bits of old cars.

It beggars belief that the Home Office proposes to mix up the personal and private information of tens of millions of citizens with other government
data, on systems of Departments that can’t even look after the identities of their own staff [4]. It’s a recipe for disaster.

In response to the plan’s conclusion, which states: “A really effective identity management scheme is essential in order to shape public services
around the citizen and realise the goal of truly joined-up and personalised government“, Guy Herbert, NO2ID=92s General Secretary said:

This is what NO2ID has been warning about for two years. ‘Personalised’ government means more direct, unified, control over the individual citizen.
The whole state on your case, the whole time.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme published by the Home Office on 19/12/06,
http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/downloads/Strategic_Action_Plan.pdf

2) David Blunkett’s speech to Labour party Conference, 2004: “… we will legislate this winter to upgrade our secure passport system, to create a
new, clean database … as people renew their passports, they will receive their new identity card.”

3) NO2ID is the non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net

4) Tax credit fraud sparks 40 probes, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5057956.stm
“HM Revenue & Customs closed the tax credits online portal in December after Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) staff had their identities hijacked … Of the 8,800 DWP staff whose identities were stolen, some 6,800 were used to make fraudulent claims.”

NO2ID press release (for immediate release 19/12/06)

The Government has released its important Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme [1] on the last possible day and with the maximum of misleading spin, in the hope no-one will actually read it, civil liberties campaigners say.

The document was announced on the last day before the parliamentary recess, and accompanied by a press release [2] emphasising largely separate powers to fingerprint foreign residents. But it contains very significant revelations about the nature of government plans and a complete reversal of direction on technology. It comes only a day after a similarly complicated presentation of data-sharing in the National Health Service medical records system. NO2ID [3] accused the government of holding it back to minimise discussion of the important questions raised

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s General Secretary said:

After being promised all Autumn [4], this is being sneaked out in the hope no-one will be bothered to read it properly just before Christmas. And no wonder. The government has begun to show its hand on data-sharing. Your ID won’t be separate from other government information as ministers have repeatedly promised, but will be kept across multiple computer systems joined together for that purpose, and directly linked, from the start, to pensions, tax and immigration files.[5]

The object of the exercise is made completely explicit: ‘truly joined-up and personalised government’ [6]… in other words, the whole government on your case the whole time.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1. See http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/downloads/Strategic_Action_Plan.pdf

2. See http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/news_19-12-06.asp The Action Plan is mentioned only two-thirds down.

3. NO2ID is cross-party, non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net

4. An Action Plan was announced “in weeks” by Home Office minister Joan Ryan speaking at the Biometrics 2006 conference in October.

5. See Strategic Action Plan (as note 1) s15

6. See Strategic Action Plan (as note 1) conclusion and chapters 1, 2 and 6

for immediate release

Government plans to allow patients a chance to avoid their medical history being uploaded to a centralised NHS ‘Spine’ database – but only if they can prove that doing so would cause them “substantial mental distress” [1] – were condemned today by privacy campaigners NO2ID [2].

The Government has decided to go forward with the scheme, which will mean personal records being accessible to in excess of 400,000 clinicians and officials [3], despite the fact that the privacy systems originally planned are not working [4]. It has also withdrawn its implied promise to allow people a choice [5].

Guy Herbert, NO2ID’s General Secretary said:

It is not just monstrous. It is madness. You are expected to petition an official to be allowed to keep intimate details of your life private – permission which he may, in his wisdom, decide to grant… but only after having examined whatever it is that you don’t want others to know and agreed that you are sufficiently distressed for you to be permitted exemption. Mediaeval trial by ordeal was fairer.

Government plans also disregard that information, once supplied to the system, will be held forever [6].

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator said:

How is a child of 6 to explain to an official the ‘mental distress’ she will suffer when her medical records are ’shared’ inappropriately at the age of 32? This is not about healthcare or patient choice; it is about bureaucracy and control.

Confidentiality campaigners insist that doctor-patient confidentiality is not at the discretion of the Department of Health and are continuing to urge patients to write to their own doctors [7] to demand their records are not passed to the Spine.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1. Electronic Care Records go ahead – BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6184043.stm

2.NO2ID is an independent, non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6184043.stm

2.NO2ID is an independent, non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/faq/delivery

4. There was to have been a system of “sealed envelopes” for information defined as confidential by patients or clinicians – the relevant DoH documents describing its objects as:
“1. Building confidence, 2. Offering choice and giving control, 3. Dissuade patients from dissenting, 4.Enable sharing of PSIS [Personal Spine Information Service] messages” (Our emphasis.)
See: www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/crdb/sealed_envelopes.ppt [MS Powerpoint]
But they aren’t working yet. See: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,,1491908,00.html
(An article of May, which is still valid, since they still aren’t working.) How information, once shared on the main Spine, might be sealed again is an unanswered technical question.

5.John Hutton MP, then the relevant minister, in Hansard, 2 Nov 2004: Column 176W
“Patients will have the right to specify that detailed information recorded at the point of contact with the NHS should not be available to other NHS organisations via the summary record held on their NHS care record. They will also have the right to define some information as especially sensitive and only accessible under terms of explicit consent.”
See: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo041102/text/41102w08.htm

6. “building up a comprehensive patient history,” a phrase which recurs in many documents relating to the NHS Programme for IT, notably
the Scottish Executive’s most comprehensive “Building a Health Service Fit for the Future” See: https://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/05/23141500/15035
(Which also discusses the merger of health and social care records to form a yet bigger and yet more intrusive system.)

7. See: http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org/?page_id=3