PM Calls for Dissolution… Not a Moment Too Soon
Civitas, 6 April 2010
It has been a very long time since my school-days, but today has something of that same end-of-year feeling that I recall always sensing at the imminent prospect of temporary respite from the tedium of homework and the daily commute to and from school.
Without overmuch hope for any bright new dawn come a new tenancy at Number 10, sufficient clear water still separates the two main parties to give voters with any healthy mistrust of overblown government reason to cast their vote one way rather than another.
One such issue dividing them concerns the fate of the centralised electronic data-base of NHS patient records. The present government seems intent on pressing ahead with it, whereas the Conservatives rightly oppose it.
The stealth-like manner of its introduction these last few months, without patients being offered any real and genuine opt-out, speaks volumes about the present government. Even the Germans not noted for their libertarian leanings, have abandoned a similar national project out of concerns about patient confidentiality.
That the present government is still pressing ahead with it, despite all the well-advertised similar concerns raised here by doctors, patients’ associations, computer-security experts and civil liberties groups, reveals how little New Labour values the rights of the individual as opposed to the convenience of state bureaucracy.
What has triggered these reflections has been recent press reports that NHS patient records are currently being shipped for processing to India, despite previous assurances this would not happen.
Mind you anyone who still takes any promises made by this government seriously is in sufficient need of urgent medical attention as perhaps to warrant their medical records being freely available to all and sundry.
I can’t wait for polling day, therefore, not because of anything particularly good to which I am looking forward, but because of something positively bad the end of which I anticipate finally seeing.