You might find this hard to believe but I really do try to avoid knee-jerk reactions to potential invasions of privacy. Some databases are actually useful. Information collection and sharing is fine in principle providing it follows the rules of consent and "need to know".

Which is why I haven't said anything about the proposed NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) system. This will - if it ever works - link up NHS records from individual hospitals and surgeries around the UK. So if I'm taken ill on holiday in Dorset the local doctor will be able to see my medical records from Edinburgh.

Of course there are practical questions: Will the data be secure and accurate? Will the system be reliable? Is it a worthwhile investment or a hugely expensive white elephant? But in principle I can't object to the goal of making health records available to medical professionals when required.

The idea of such a vast national system does, however, make me uneasy. I realised it wasn't just my knee twitching when I saw this line in the NHS Information Governance Review:

"There is considerable pressure to obtain access to data on the NHS Care Records Service from other government departments, public services such as the police and immigration services, and researchers"

To be fair, they do go on to say:

"Clear ethical values and standard procedures consistently applied are essential if the right uses of the NHS Care Records Service are to be secured and maintained. As the National Programme for IT Programme Board has already acknowledged, ethical, consistent and effective information governance is a necessity if these benefits are to be realised and public confidence maintained."

That sounds good, but once the system is in place the pressure for access will become greater and greater and any safeguards will be chipped away bit by bit.

I find it highly significant that although the document talks about "protecting patient information" the word "consent" doesn't appear once.

Of course you can argue that the police - possibly even civil servants - should have access to these records when they have reasonable cause to believe that they will assist for a specific purpose. Unfortunately experience has shown that "reasonable cause" soon becomes "standard operating procedure" and "specific purpose" soon becomes "fishing expedition".

However noble the intent of the Caldicott Guardians, political pressure for wider access to our private medical records will become ever stronger. Eventually that pressure will become irresistable.

On it's own the proposed NHS CRC is no threat. In a different political climate I might even have welcomed it.

But combined with this government's other attacks on privacy it has the potential to become yet another tool of the surveillance state.

NHS NHS CRS privacy UK politics ukpolitics