The NHS is now required to hand the Home Office the addresses of people it suspects of being in the country illegally, BuzzFeed News can reveal, under a new policy that has led to the government being accused of "out-Trumping Donald Trump".

The data sharing deal, which makes it much easier for the Home Office to use NHS information in tracking down people who have overstayed their visas or are accused of immigration offences, has been condemned by health charities as causing a major risk to public health, as well as to people who may be deterred from seeking treatment for serious illness.

BuzzFeed News has seen letters from the Home Office to GPs that have led in at least one case to people being wrongly refused basic healthcare to which they were entitled, as well as communications asking doctors to hand over the details of their patients so the Home Office could take action against them.

The concerns centre around a new data-sharing deal between the Home Office, the Department of Health, and NHS Digital that took effect on 1 January this year. NHS Digital controls centralised databases of nonclinical information for the NHS, containing information such as names, dates of birth, GP registration, and addresses.



The new "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) was initially intended to be kept confidential, but was published at the end of last month in response to a freedom of information request.

The small print of the document contains a very significant shift. Previously, NHS Digital would provide only general details – name, date of birth, and the GP area but not the specific practice – to the Home Office, which would then have to find out the GP and request the information from them. But now NHS Digital will directly give the Home Office the most recently registered address of the individuals it asks about.

In the first 11 months of 2016 alone – before the new protocol took effect – the Home Office had asked for more than 8,100 patients' records.

Leigh Daynes, the executive director of Doctors of the World, a charity that operates clinics for asylum-seekers who are deterred from seeking treatment from mainstream NHS facilities, said the government's new data-sharing rules mimicked some being considered by US president Donald Trump.

A draft White House executive order, published by Vox, includes provisions ordering the use of information on public benefits (such as food stamps or Medicaid) to help with Trump's deportation effort. The order has not yet been signed by the president.



"The NHS should not be used as an extension of government border control – healthcare and immigration are totally separate matters," Daynes told BuzzFeed News.



"Perhaps Jeremy Hunt is pleased to have out-trumped Donald Trump, whose aspirations to meddle with public services for political purposes are less well advanced."

