Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on access to care of any requirement for two forms of identification to be provided before NHS treatment is given to a patient.

We welcome trusts piloting schemes whereby they ask National Health Service patients for two forms of identification to demonstrate an individual’s residency status. This is good practice and helps establish in a non-discriminatory way who may be eligible for free NHS care and who may not. We will monitor the impact that identification checks have, including the effect on costs identified and recovered from people not eligible for free NHS care.