Burning Issue: Do we need to introduce compulsory identity cards in Britain?

Published on Sunday 8 June 2008 22:10

Yes MEG HILLIER, Home Office minister

WE ALL need to be able to prove who we are – quickly, easily and securely. We need to safeguard this data in a way we can trust and that can be trusted by others, when applying for a job, travelling abroad or using business and government services.

The National Identity Scheme offers citizens a new, secure and convenient way to protect and prove our identity and provides us with the reassurance we need that others who occupy positions of trust are who they say they are too.

Identity fraud costs the UK 1.7 billion a year and anyone who has been a victim will be aware of the need for better protection. The National Identity Register will help deliver this. Your name will be linked by your fingerprints to a unique entry on the register, so nobody will be able to impersonate you.

Currently, 80 per cent of British citizens have a passport and their information held on a central database. From 2011, you will be able to choose whether to have a passport or ID card or both. The data held about you centrally will be much the same as now. The extra information will be your National Insurance number and up-to-date address and on a separate database, your fingerprints.

But let's be clear about the government's position on compulsion. We have always said that there will be no requirement to carry or present a card.

Any relationship between individual and the state needs high levels of trust from the citizen and strong safeguards assured by government. But few can argue against the principles of countering illegal immigration and illegal employment.

No

DAMIAN GREEN, Shadow immigration minister

BEHIND the government's bluster it is clear that the ID card scheme is suffering delays and a loss of impetus.

It will cost billions, curtail freedoms and, according to experts, could even make identity fraud worse. The government should give up on this scheme.

The government has already lost the intellectual argument, mainly because it keeps changing its case. At various stages, ID cards have been necessary to protect us from terrorism, illegal immigration and benefit fraud.

But former home secretaries, academics and senior figures in the IT industry have lined up to demolish each individual argument.

On top of this, the project has been beset by delays. By 2015, 10 per cent of foreign nationals will still not have their card. The first group of Britons due for ID cards are airport workers – and there is no sign of agreement from them to be willing guinea pigs in this experiment.

As the delays have grown, public support for ID cards has shrunk. The combination of the lost discs with 25 million people's financial details, the 5,000 illegal immigrants cleared to work in the security industry and the half a million false names on the DNA database have convinced people that putting all their most private information in the hands of the British state might not be the best of way of keeping it secure.

The Conservatives will scrap ID cards and the National Identity register, to use some of the money saved to help fund extra prison places and create a dedicated Border Police Force. Ministers should admit the inevitable and kill off this scheme.