POLL: Should people have to show their passport to be treated at hospital?

Health officials are examining whether patients should have to show identification to get some elements of NHS care.

Labour said it would oppose the proposition, saying NHS staff were 'not border guards'.

A senior official said the Department of Health was looking into some methods already being employed across some parts of the NHS to claw back money from foreign users.

But people in Wolverhampton gave a mixed reaction - with some saying it would stop the abuse of services while others said they believe it would make people feel threatened or excluded.

Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health, which is responsible for the NHS in England, told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) the NHS had got a 'lot further to go' when it came to reclaiming money from foreign visitors.

Mr Wormald admitted there were challenges in the identification of people who should be charged for elements of NHS care.

Mr Wormald said some trusts were trialling asking patients to bring ID before getting treatment and the Department of Health was looking into whether more should go down a similar route.

Dr Mark Porter, chairman of BMA council, said: "Ensuring eligibility for NHS services is always important but these proposals go much too far and it is unlikely they could ever be turned into a serious policy that would be accepted by patients and the public, that is, showing your passport before undergoing treatment."

Labour's shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said public sector staff were not border guards.

"The real problem here is government cuts," she said.

"Instead, we are invited to believe foreigners are a significant problem in the NHS, without much evidence."

"We should be clear what this policy would mean. Either we would all have to carry two pieces of ID to get treatment, or those who are believed to sound or look foreign will be profiled in order to receive treatment."

"Labour will oppose this policy, and would reverse it if implemented by this Tory government."

PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier also expressed concern about British residents that did not have photo ID and those who would struggle to find a utility bill.

There are different rules for charging visitors from the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland and from those outside the EEA.

Visitors from the EEA are usually covered by agreements under which their home country pays for treatment.

But there are big differences between the amount of money other European countries claim from the UK and how much the UK pays out, the Committee heard.

The Committee drew on official figures released earlier this year which show that in 2014/15 £674 million was charged to the UK government for the care of British citizens in EEA countries.

But the amount charged for the care of EEA nationals in British hospitals was just £49 million.

Mr Wormald said the figure was "hugely driven" by the number of UK pensioners who live abroad.

There are 62 Spanish pensioners living in the UK compared to 70,000 British retirees living in Spain, said Mr Wormald.

But in 2014/15, Poland charged the government £4.3 million for the medical care of British patients, while the UK charged the Polish Government £1.5 million for the treatment of Polish people in the UK, the Committee was told.

Yesterday, Mr Wormald told MPs that the Department of Health had an "awful lot more to do before we could hand on heart say we are doing our duty to the taxpayer in this area".

He said officials were looking at a range of measures to encourage the identification of people who should be paying for NHS care, including whether all patients should have to show ID.

He added: "We are looking... at whether trusts should do more on upfront identification.

"The general question - are we looking at whether trusts should proactively ask people to prove identity? Yes, we are looking at that.

"There are individual trusts like Peterborough who are doing that, who are reporting that it makes a big difference and there you are saying 'please come with two forms of identity, your passport and your address' and they use that to check whether people are eligible or not.

"Now it is obviously quite a controversial thing to do to say to the entire population you now have to prove identity."

But Ms Hillier said the process could be "humiliating" for some patients.

"I have constituents who have no photo IDs," she said.

"Because they have never travelled they have no passport, they have no driver's licence because they have never driven, they still live at home because they can't afford to move out so they've never had a utility bill in their name.

"(They are) perfectly entitled to health care - British born, British resident - how are you going to make sure that people have access easily to the National Health Service without having to go through a very humiliating and impossible to meet set of demands?"

Mr Wormald replied: "This is why we are going very slowly on some of these questions and individual trusts are trying these out."

ends

Labour's shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth added: "It's testament to the desperate squeeze on our NHS finances that we have civil servants publicly talking about patients being forced to show not one but two forms of identification before they are treated.

"The NHS is supposed to be free at the point of need, not free at the point of ID'd.

"This story - which Jeremy Hunt's team regularly spin - shows the Tories are desperately trying to distract attention from their broken promises on funding for the NHS and social care."