Officialdom has inequality at its heart
IDisneyland’M back in the office this week after taking my young family abroad for the first time. I say abroad, we went to Paris via the Channel Tunnel, so it was less like foreign travel and more like entering a state of suspended reality – a journey to a new dimension where the streets are immaculate, the fictional characters are real and queueing for an hour with small children is acceptable.
Nevertheless passports were required. This meant I spent a happy evening earlier this year completing forms on behalf of each child and passed much of the spring in the corner of a pharmacy alternately persuading two four-year-olds and a seven-year-old to stand to attention, with no hint of a smile, while a shop assistant unused to cameras tried to take photos which would meet strict government regulations.
Happily we got it all posted in the end and, credit where credit is due, three pristine passports bearing images with a passing resemblance to my giggling girls arrived after little more than a week.
More difficult, however, than trying to persuade a pre-schooler to stare at the woman with the camera and not her mother huddled with her sisters by the verruca plasters, was the whole “countersigning” kerfuffle. (This, by the way, is the part of this column which relates to my health correspondent role at The Herald – in case you were wondering.) As recent passport applicants may recall you are required to ask someone else to confirm your identity as part of the process, a duty which includes their signing the back of your photo to swear it is a “true likeness”.
This is not unreasonable, nor is the requirement they must have known you for at least two years (although trickier when you’ve only been alive for four.) But what hit me was that the counter-signatory must be “a person of good standing in their community or work in (or be retired from) a recognised profession”. There, in the middle of a state system most people encounter in their lives, lies blatant inequality and prejudice. You only have to read the cases which come before industry regulators, such as the General Medical Council, to know professionals are not immune to error, incompetence and fraud. But, the wording rather suggests this doesn’t matter to the passport office. You can be a lousy professional, but in their eyes your opinion still counts. Meanwhile, tradesmen, stay-at-home mothers, people who handle money in shops, keep hospitals clean, cut hair and collect refuse are missing from the list of people they suggest are worthy enough to verify a photo.
For me this meant overlooking the mothers who knew my girls best, and hoping their husbands would help out. But that’s not the point. Experts suggest feeling excluded or living with a sense of inferiority is itself bad for health. Policymakers talk about addressing inequalities, but the gulf between life expectancy in poor and affluent communities persists. This is not surprising given there is little appetite to make fundamental changes to share wealth and opportunity – and the fact you cannot even leave the country without a “professional” confirming you exist.
‘‘ This meant overlooking the mothers who knew my girls best, and hoping their husbands would help out. But that’s not the point