Home Office to Consult on Smart ID Cards

The Home Office is to publish proposals to introduce identity cards in the UK, based on smart card technology, with Home Secretary David Blunkett expected to announce a six month public consultation on the proposals.

Introducing national ID cards was floated by the Home Office in the aftermath of September 11 as a potential guard against terrorist attack, this time ID cards have been re-badged ‘entitlement cards’ in a consultation document called ‘Entitlement Cards and Identity Theft’ .

The ‘entitlement cards’ could potentially be used to clamp down on fraud by providing an identification mechanism to check individual’s rights to receive NHS treatment, education and other state benefits.

Whether individuals without an "entitlement card" could eventually be denied healthcare remains unclear at this stage.

Computerised ID cards could store a photograph, finger prints and personal data. The consultation document says that an entitlement card would include a central database capable of covering all of the resident population of the UK, ‘links behind the cetral register and information held on systems by other service providers’.

‘The cards could provide a convenient way for people to prove their identity and their entitlement to services in some circumstances’, says the document.

Smart cards could also potentially provide a valuable authentication and security mechanism to enable people to securely access online government services, regarded by some analysts as the missing component of a coherent e-government strategy.

The potential to store emergency medical information is highlighted by the paper, which invites views on whether an entitlement card should store emergency medical information, and what medical information it would be most useful to display.

A commitment to examine the potential for smart cards in health was contained in the Labour’s manifesto at the 2001 General Election and small scale evaluation work has quietly been carried out by the Department of Health.

The NHS is already introducing smart card technology to provide all 30,000 trainee doctors with Smart Cards containing health and employment data to streamline pre-employment health checks. All data will be double pin number protected so it cannot be changed without the doctor being present.

Successful trials of an NHS smart card were also carried out a decade ago in Devon and the cards were already used in other countries, such as France.

Applied to the health sector the introduction of such smart cards, possibly in conjunction with interactive digital TV services, public kiosks or NHS Direct, could provide the necessary tool to enable citizens to securely order prescription refills or access their electronic health records, something the government has promised all citizens will be able to do by 2005.

Ministers are reported to be neutral about the idea of computerised ID cards and want to hear the public’s opinions. The consultation is intended to test the appetite for the new cards and try to come up with a way to meet critics’ concerns.

The Home Secretary, with his determination to be seen to be tough on immigration, appears to have the greatest appetite for ‘entitlement cards’.

E-Health Insider readers concerned about the potential erosion of civil liberties that introducing ‘entitlement cards’ might represent should be glad that Mr Blunkett hasn’t followed our coverage of the development of implantable ID chips in the US, otherwise we might instead be hearing about consultations on ‘benefit chips’.

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