Medical ethics: UK uses data from doctors to find migrants

To track down people in Britain who may have broken immigration rules, the government is turning to a new and controversial source of information: doctors.

Doctors who work with refugees and asylum-seekers have described the move as a major breach of medical ethics, saying it isn't up to physicians to enforce immigration rules.

In letters recently made public, politicians sparred with immigration officials over a data-sharing agreement quietly signed in 2016 that gives the government access to personal information collected by the country's family doctors.

Medical details are excluded.

A parliamentary health committee condemned the situation as "unacceptable," calling for the agreement to be suspended.

But Britain's immigration department has dismissed those concerns, arguing that such data sharing allows the UK to remove people "who might pose a danger to the public."
"The idea that any patient information is being shared with a government body immediately breaks their trust in a doctor-patient relationship."
Dr Kitty Worthing, a London-based doctor with the group Docs Not Cops, said "the cornerstone of the doctor-patient relationship is confidentiality and this data-sharing is a direct breach of that." She said when she's advised people that their personal information could be shared with immigration officials "their reaction is always fear."
"If people are not diagnosed because they're not accessing health care, they're not aware they're living with HIV, which means they're far more likely to pass it on to somebody else."
"The Home Office visited the address and arrested the individual, a convicted sex offender, who is now complying with the Home Office and will leave the UK," Noakes and O'Shaughnessy wrote, describing patients' non-medical data as being "at the lower end of the privacy spectrum."