UK Borders Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for the information that he has given us. I make no apology for raising not just the individual cases that were referred to in yesterday’s Guardian, but the fact that they were illustrations of a much more general problem of access to health services and to PCTs in particular by women who might find that they were being denied once the BIDs became universal and had to be produced. If the gist of the Minister’s remarks is that no one is to be denied access to health services as a result of the introduction of the BIDs, I very much welcome that assurance, but it is best taken care of if he accepts my suggestion that we narrow down the circumstances in which a BID can be required to be produced to the main ones that he has mentioned: access to employment and access to benefits. I would be very happy if the Bill could be amended so that those were the only two cases in which the BID had to be compulsorily produced. It would then become clear that a person could not be denied access to maternity or ante-natal treatment and that if he or she required medication, the pharmacist would not be able to refuse it on the ground that the BID was not current.