UK Borders Bill

I remind the Minister that I said that we were perfectly happy with the remarks he made originally about the use of the BID for the purposes of access to employment and access to benefits. I am concerned about other ways in which the BID will be used and why it is not possible to specify them. If the Minister now says that there is no case in which persons will be denied access to health treatment because their BID is not current, or there is some flaw in it, let us put that in the Bill. If the only circumstances in which the BID is to be used for access to public services is when someone goes into the jobcentre and is asked to produce it to show that they are eligible for work, or in the private sector when they go to an employer and they produce a BID to show that they have the right to work in this country, then I am not arguing with the Minister. I am saying, ““Fine, let’s put that on the face of the Bill. Let us say that the circumstances in which the BID has to be produced for any purpose other than immigration control is to grant access to paid employment and to grant access to benefits””. If we put that in the Bill, it would become clear that no one was going to be denied health treatment. If this is left blank, we do not know whether there are going to be continual cases like those reported in the Guardian yesterday. Apart from a person who was denied treatment, someone else was given a bill for £13,000 for maternity services that she had incurred. It is not just a question of how the Government intend the BID to be used; it is how it would actually be used on the ground that concerns the Committee at this stage.