Recognising that black Britons will be even more discriminated against in the job market if he requires employers to screen would-be employees, he has held back from compelling companies to carry out immigration checks.Mr Howard's proposals include a Department of Social Security review of eligibility for benefit, a possible tightening of access to student grants by the Department for Education and Employment, and a review by the Department of Health of the availability of free medical treatment. And if the experience of France, which has similar policies in place, is anything to go by, it will prompt a rash of reported cases, which will turn out to be based on prejudice rather than fact.The rest of the package falls short of his trailed crackdown. The latest figures suggest that the Home Office detected 13,000 suspected illegal immigrants last year - but it has no idea whether or not they received any benefits.Yet his proposals to train public officials to identify and report illegal immigrants have the potential to turn headteachers, health administrators, college admissions tutors, benefit and housing officers into de facto immigration officers. Who is right? The only thing that is clear is that this is the latest in a series of measures aimed at what is rapidly becoming a favourite target of the Government - the illegal immigrant and the bogus asylum seeker. Recent months have seen new legislation and immigration rules that have dramatically reduced the numbers qualifying for asylum, made it far more difficult to gain entry into the UK as a visitor and reduced appeal rights. Yesterday's moves were the result of a two-year Home Office study designed to develop greater co-ordination between government departments to uncover illegal immigrants.The problem is that the Government still has no idea how many illegal immigrants there are, where they come from, how they live when they are here - and, fundamental to Mr Howard's claims over welfare scroungers, how many abuse the system.

"As things stand, you could have the situation where people could be forced into finding out something about their health prospects that they didn't want to know.". Michael Howard said yesterday that he was embarking on a crackdown to stop benefit, housing and health fraud by illegal immigrants. Immigration and refugee welfare groups said it was no more than a "snoopers' charter", of limited and unproven effect, which risks damaging race relations. He believes that matters are so urgent that, rather than delay for primary legislation, it would be desirable to start up the Human Genetics Commission on a voluntary basis, in the same way that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (which regulates "test-tube baby" and infertility treatment) started as a voluntary licensing body.Alastair Kent said: "The potential for discrimination is enormous if genetic tests are available in an unregulated way." He added that it was significant that the committee had come out so strongly against employers having access to genetic information on their workers. I hope to see the Government committing itself to taking the main measures forward."Sir Giles emphasised that genetic science held a "large prospect" of new advances in medicine but that protective measures needed to be put in place now. To ensure public confidence, the commission should have a majority of lay-members and should hold its meetings in as open a fashion as possible.Sir Giles Shaw, the select committee's chairman, said: "Governments would be wise to act on these matters before the event.

At present it appears impossible to prevent this".The committee's solution is the Human Genetics Commission which would regulate medical uses of genetics and act as an adviser to the Government on other matters as the science of human genetics unfolds. Although it is a reputable organisation, the committee warns that there is "a very real danger that unscrupulous companies may prey on the public's fear of disease and genetic disorders and offer inappropriate tests, without adequate counselling. It will give them a mechanism by which they can introduce legislation on insurance at the end of the one-year moratorium," Mr Kent said.Last year, one commercial company began offering genetic tests for cystic fibrosis by post. Mr Kent pointed out that GIG supports the amendment tabled yesterday to the Disability Discrimination Bill which would prevent the unfair discriminatory use of genetic information by insurers and employers."We hope the Government will accept the amendment.

Their report says the industry should be given a year to sort itself out or Parliament should decide for it.The report was welcomed yesterday by Alastair Kent on behalf of the Genetic Interest Group (GIG), which represents the interests of families affected by inherited disorders. Previous calls for regulation have come from non-governmental bodies such as the Nuffield Foundation's Council on Bioethics.The MPs accuse the insurance industry of "undue complacency" about the possibility of genetic discrimination against those applying for life assurance. TOM WILKIE Science Editor MPs yesterday called for the setting up of a human genetics commission to prevent abuse of gene testing and to avoid discrimination against people on the grounds of what is in their genes.Legislation is also needed to give people the right to privacy about what is written in their genes, according to a report from the Select Committee on Science and Technology, which says misuse of genetic information should be both a criminal and a civil offence.The report is the first serious attempt by Parliament to grapple with the issues thrown up by the new science of human molecular genetics. Some women have decided not to have children, ignorant that a more modern test might clear them.. She knows of some who have had only the chromosome test and have not been recalled for the more reliable genetic test. "I know a lot of families who have the same anxieties about about how to tell their children that they are at risk of having children with the same sort of thing as their brothers and sisters," she said.Mrs Carmichael worries that NHS genetics services "simply don't have the personnel or funding, so families do not have good follow-up".

She says the knowledge is "a tremendous relief - because of my own children. I was contemplating, when do I have to tell my children that they could be carriers?"Her eldest daughter had already been asking questions, prompted by her uncles' condition, and Mrs Carmichael had warned her that when she had children in her turn there was a risk that they might be affected Now that worry has been alleviated. She decided on an abortion.In the 1980s, a chromosome test became available: this could not discover whether she was a carrier of the defective gene, but it could be used during pregnancy. She now has two daughters aged 15 and 12, and completed her family in 1988 with the birth of a son.Four years later, after a reliable test for carrier status was devised, Mrs Carmichael discovered she had not inherited the defective gene and had never been at risk of bearing children with the disease.