How a UK national ID card would 'stop the boats'

The requirement to have an ID card to work, claim benefits or receive healthcare would be a big disincentive to people looking to come to the UK illegally

The long days of summer bring another high tide of small boats across the English Channel, despite renewed efforts by the Labour government to stem the numbers. Some 17,000 have already made the crossing this year with the Prime Minister admitting the situation is “deteriorating”.

For the first time, immigration has been ranked amongst the top five concerns for Scots even though numbers coming here have traditionally been much lower. According to the polls, no politician can afford to ignore this issue.

With a falling birth rate, Scotland has specific migration needs but they can only be met through a system that is regulated, transparent and understood.

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Migrants abandon a people-smugglers' boat after it was punctured with a knife by French police to stop them attempting to cross the English Channel from a beach at Gravelines, near Dunkirk (Picture: Sameer Al-Doumy) | AFP via Getty Images

Social media surveillance

Everyone who comes to this country, legally or illegally, does so for their own personal reasons. It might be the search for a better life and the opportunities available in a safe and secure country. It might be the pull of our language. It might be a welfare system more generous than elsewhere but there is another vital factor as well.

The UK is one of the few countries in the world without a system of national identity cards. In some places, they are voluntary, in others mandatory, but the argument against them is out of date.

Civil liberties organisations used to fear the level of surveillance and control this would allow over individual citizens. That day is gone. Now Mark Zuckerberg knows what you think via social media, while Jeff Bezos has the lowdown on what you buy. Marks and Spencer probably knows your inside leg measurement.

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We’re also one of the world’s most surveilled countries with more than five million cameras on buses, in shops and offices, and even in our own doorbells. So what difference would identity cards make?

Right now some estimates suggest the shadow migrant economy built around casual employment in places like car washes, nail bars, barber shops and fast-food outlets could amount 10 per cent of our GDP. Without a system for verifying identity, shutting it down is a mammoth task requiring the background of every individual to be checked. Biometric identity cards would change that overnight.

Uniform system across EU

The lack of a system of identity verification is another unwitting consequence of Brexit. All 27 EU countries how have a uniform system with Portugal and Bulgaria the latest to sign up. The presence of a carte d’identite in France seems to be a key factor in pushing individuals to the Channel and the route to the UK where it’s much easier to disappear from the scrutiny of the state.

We’ve been here before. More than 20 years ago, an experimental system of ID cards was introduced but then dropped because of opposition from civil liberty campaigners. However that was long before the migration numbers we see today with the knock-on effects they have.

According to former Home Secretary David Blunkett, the small boats scandal would never have happened if the government had persevered with that scheme because the requirement to have an ID card to work, claim benefits or receive healthcare would have been a big disincentive to people coming here in the first place.

That opportunity was lost but it’s not too late to join the rest of the world in adopting a transparent means of verification that makes perfect sense.