*UK dances to their success*
Keeping Up The Pressure
c/o No2ID
With Second Reading of the Identity Documents Bill 2010-11 (i.e. the first debate in the Commons) scheduled for Wednesday 9th June, moves to dismantle the National Identity Scheme are truly under way.
The Bill as drafted is not quite perfect - there remain some technical issues which we shall be briefing Parliamentarians to amend or remove at Committee stage (where changes are actually made) - but it should do the job. And we shall continue to do ours: lobbying, analysis, briefings... the fight against the database state in Westminster and Whitehall, though often less visible than other forms of campaigning, is a vital part of NO2ID's work.
It is a positive sign that the very first Bill introduced by the coalition government is one to repeal the Identity Cards Act. But the government's continued failure to act on Summary Care Record uploads, despite promising in the Coalition Agreement to "[put] patients in charge of making decisions about their care, including control of their health records" is far less encouraging.
The new Health ministers may need time to review the entire programme, but there's no reason to allow even more people's records to be sucked into the system while they do.
Some GP practices have uploaded patient records since the election, despite the supposed halt announced by the Department of Health earlier this year - and while uploads continue, every week or month that goes by puts more people's medical confidentiality at risk.
Please, if you haven't done so already, write to your new MP urging him or her to call for an *immediate* halt to Summary Care Record uploads.
The online letter-writing tool that POWER2010 kindly built for us makes it straightforward and quick to do: http://www.power2010.org.uk/Halt
IN OTHER NEWS:
Government aims to pass Identity Documents Bill by summer holidays
Identity Commissioner and Identity Panels scrapped
ID Documents Bill caution - the Devil is in the detail
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