The Defence Brief

A mock up of a British National Identity Card Following the Second World War, Britain called for help from the people of the Commonwealth to come and fill thousands of job vacancies. Many answered the call and came to be known as the Windrush Generation after named the MV Empire Windrush, which docked in Tilbury on the 22 nd June 1948 bringing the first workers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. The Home Office inevitably screwed up and caused a huge number of problems for members of the Windrush Generation. But their story is not the subject of this blog. Instead, I want to look at a side issue that has raised its weary head once again: ID cards. Alan Johnson and Charles Clarke, both former Home Secretaries, have begun a call for ID cards as the solution to the troubles of undocumented British citizens who have not had their status regularised. ID cards pop up every few years and I’ve no doubt that eventually we’ll have a compulsory piece of plastic foisted upon us that ...

Charlie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover, and officials in the Department for Health have been mooting the idea of nationwide identity checks for patients before they receive NHS treatment in the UK. On the face of it, the reasoning behind this is the scourge of “health tourism” that plagues the pages of outraged tabloid newspapers and right wing broadsheets. In April 2016, the Telegraph reported in an article entitled, “ Health tourists cost UK taxpayers £6billion in eight years ” that “Britain has lost more than £6billion in the past eight years treating foreigners from the European Union in UK hospitals” . But, what do we mean by health tourism? My definition is people who come to the UK specifically to receive medical treatment for free on the NHS. I, and I think most people, would not include a Frenchman who visits the UK and is hit by a car while here as a health tourist. If you accept that definition then the Telegraph’s claim is nonsense. Full Fact tells us t...