ID cards don't work -- even Tony says so

By Philip Johnston
London Telegraph
Dec. 05, 2006

On this page a few weeks ago, Tony Blair set out his case for the ID card scheme that his Government is preparing to foist upon the British people over the next eight years or so. This was, presumably, a different Tony Blair from the one whose thoughts I stumbled across at the weekend while digging out books for the local Christmas fair. New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country, published in 1996, was a collection of newspaper articles and speeches that encapsulated Mr Blair's Third Way political philosophy, the prospectus on which he would be elected to office the following year. On the cover, he said: "When we make a promise, we must be sure we can keep it. That is page one, line one of a new contract between the Government and the citizen."

So what did he think of ID cards? The answer was on page 68: "Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards, let that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local community." So much for Mr Blair's new contract.

Ministers have consistently claimed that there is public support for the ID card project. When the idea was proposed after the September 11 attacks, polls suggested that it enjoyed the backing of 80 per cent of the country, a figure that has fallen markedly in today's YouGov survey. Labour also claims an electoral mandate because the proposal was included in its 2005 election manifesto. However, this gave the impression that it would not be compulsory: "We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data such as fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports."

This was, at the very least, misleading. From 2008, if you want to get a new passport, you will be automatically registered on the ID database, with no choice in the matter. You will also have to go to one of a network of centres that is currently being prepared around the country, where 50 pieces of personal information will be input into the database, and scans of both irises, all your fingerprints and a photograph will be taken.

You will be issued with your personal identity number and it will be an offence if, having been entered on to the database, you do not subsequently inform the authorities that you have moved home. It will, of course, be possible to do without a passport, but this is hardly a realistic option for most people.

The Identity Cards Act also allows ministers, by order, to designate other documents whose renewal will involve compulsory inclusion on the database; so if uptake is slower than the Government expects, driving licences could be added to the list. Within a few years, a sufficient number of people – say 50 per cent of the adult population – will be covered, at which point the Government will seek to extend the scheme to everyone else.

This will happen long after Mr Blair has departed the scene and, quite probably, after Labour has lost power. The assumption is that so much will have been spent on the system by then, and the details of so many people will already be on the database, that a future administration would not wish to scrap it.

The Conservatives are committed to abolishing the ID database, but would they really do so once in office? They will be like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings trying to get rid of the One Ring, so in thrall to its power that it becomes impossible to part with it.

A decision not to proceed with the ID scheme needs to be taken soon, because the start-up costs are beginning to soar. It should have been killed off in Parliament, but Labour MPs, apart from 20 brave souls who rebelled on Second Reading, were either too bovine or too wedded to their party's spooky authoritarianism.

They were also fed, and swallowed, a good deal of guff about the efficacy of an ID system that, over the years, has been hailed as the answer to illegal immigration, terrorism, crime and benefit fraud. Mr Blair said it was "all part of a changing world… biometrics give us the chance to have secure identity, and the bulk of the ID cards' cost will have to be spent on the new biometric passports in any event".

Just because biometric technology is available does not justify fingerprinting the entire population. Nor does it necessarily give us a secure identity. However sophisticated the system, there will be false matches and false non-matches, and these increase in number the larger the database. The innocent will be most inconvenienced – or even criminalised – by these inevitable glitches, accused of being someone they are not or not accepted as who they are. Crooks will simply find a way of attacking the system, and the temptation to do so will be all the greater precisely because people are being falsely led to believe that it will be foolproof.

The fact that passports are also going to contain biometrics or that banks and stores already keep personal details about our financial transactions is irrelevant. The individual's relationship to the state is qualitatively different to his relationship to Tesco or NatWest.

Until recently, the Government blithely claimed it had public opinion on its side. But, as our YouGov poll shows today, the country is split in half on the ID database, and even many of those who support it do so reluctantly. A significant number say they will refuse to participate even if it means paying a fine. Is the Government really going to track down hundreds of thousands of ID refuseniks? If it will not, what is the worth of the scheme?

This is Mr Blair's legacy, the one that he disavowed just 10 years ago. When it all goes wrong, it will be Gordon Brown who gets the blame. It is an inheritance he would be wise to decline, for all our sakes.