Kitty Donaldson writes in US magazine Business Week:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government may ask U.K. banks and supermarkets to subsidize its national identity-card program, paying for documents for poorer customers to attract business.

Home Office minister Meg Hillier said companies might offer to buy the 30-pound ($46) cards for people who wouldn’t pay for them otherwise. She named Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc, both part state-owned, as candidates.

“I am keen to hear from business,” she said in an interview in London late yesterday. “Banks do give incentives to people to open bank accounts. If they are doing that for some clients, would they think of doing that for other groups? Over a lifetime they do make money out of people.”

Nicole Kobie writes in the IT Pro Editorial blog:

My mum — and yours too, I’m sure — used to say this: “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

That’s not bad advice for six-year-olds, but I’d expect better from the government.

Yesterday, I went to a speech delivered by identity minister Meg Hillier, who was telling attendees what’s next for the contentious and expensive programme at an event hosted by think tank the Social Market Forum.

She admitted that the government has had some communication issues with the card roll out, saying it would have been “much better if we talked to people before we made an announcement.”

“Please, feed in your ideas,” she pleaded.

The thing is, I don’t think she wants my ideas. I don’t think she wants the ideas of anyone who doesn’t like the cards. I don’t think she nor the Labour government want feedback from critics — be they campaigners like NO2ID or opposition government parties or people who simply don’t like big databases. I think she and her party only want to hear “nice” things.

I say this because she then accused people against the scheme of using the government’s two year failure to talk about ID cards to “scaremonger.”

Meg Hillier writes in Progress Online, advocating the Home Office’s ID Cards Scheme:

There is so much potential for a service which has citizens’ rights at its heart. It can help reach the very people who find it hard to assert their rights now. And the technological possibilities are exciting.

My vision is of an identity service where government’s role is limited to ensuring safety and security in providing the infrastructure. It will be for others to build the broader range of services which will add value to individuals.

I want to see a simple and convenient tool which helps secure that vital first job, or eases the way to a student loan or a first bank account.

I want to see a government-backed identity verification service that enables all, including the socially excluded, to access a wide range of services on their own terms.

I want to see a tool that is flexible enough to make life easier in an increasingly online and complex world.

We have achieved so much. I remain convinced of the public good that the service can provide, and of the empowerment that we can deliver for the citizens of this country.

Julie Henry writes in the Sunday Telegraph:

The Independent Schools Council has drawn up a manifesto demanding that the party that wins the election strips away the unprecedented layers of regulation that have been imposed on the sector.

It will say that the independence of schools is being worn away by Government interference, threatening their successful running and undermining the characteristics of private education that parents value.

At its annual conference next week it will call for Contactpoint, Labour’s database of all children in England, to be scrapped; the controversial new vetting and barring scheme, which regulates who is deemed to be suitable to work with children, to be slimmed down; and school inspections to be streamlined.

Fiona Barr writes in the online medical magazine EHI Primary Care:

A GP practice in Hampshire has recorded opt-out requests for the Summary Care Record from 20% of its patients.

The Oaklands Practice in Yateley, Hampshire, has run a five year information campaign for its patients on the SCR and pledged not to upload any records without explicit consent.

It has now received requests from other GP practices in different parts of the country asking for information and advice on running SCR information drives, following the launch of Public Information Programmes in five strategic health authorities.

Dr Neil Bhatia, a partner at the practice who has led the campaign, said the practice had yet to record a single request from a patient to have an SCR.

However, Dr Bhatia said his practice had not put 93C3 Read codes – “refused consent for upload to national shared electronic record” – on every patient’s record as some practices had done and it was not boycotting the project.

He told EHI Primary Care: “Nobody has given their consent at the moment, but we have said quite clearly that if they want one we will ask the PCT to create one if it decides to go-head with the project.

Meanwhile, Dr Gillian Braunold, the clinical director for the NHS Summary Care Record Programme, writes on Guardian Comment is Free:

Inquiries into cases such as those of Penny Campbell, Maria Caldwell, Victoria Climbié and Jonathan Zito all emanate from different parts of the health service. They have one recurring theme: if key information was available at a time when the risk is highest, the vulnerable, the sick and the old would be better protected.

The NHS has invested in a clinical record system called the summary care record to enable this information sharing to happen when patients receive unscheduled and emergency care. We know that patients have concerns about confidentiality and have gone through rigorous processes to ensure that the right levels of security and patient consent are in place. This means that you have an absolute right to opt out of having such an electronic record. It means you can change your mind at any time. And it means your permission will always be asked before a nurse or doctor accesses the record.