Labour is examining the possibility of forcing everyone to apply for what it calls “a basic ID card,” if the party wins the next election.
According to The Times:
The party is examining the idea of forcing everyone to apply for registration, while limiting the scale of data stored, to address the concerns about civil liberties that emerged during Tony Blair’s premiership two decades ago.
Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, revealed that an identity scheme was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”, arguing it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.
In an interview with Times Radio to be broadcast today, he suggested that almost every EU member state had some kind of identity scheme and “it can’t be beyond the wit of man” to devise one for Britain too.
He claimed that it could deter people from entering Britain illegally, as he suggested that Labour would aim to reduce the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats to zero.
The proposals are likely to be welcomed by the French government, which has repeatedly blamed Britain’s informal labour market for attracting so many illegal migrants to cross the Channel from Calais to the Kent coast…
In July a report by the Tony Blair Institute recommended introducing universal mandatory digital identity cards to help to alleviate the Channel migrant crisis, in which almost 40,000 migrants have reached the UK in small boats this year.
Under the institute’s plans, all individuals would be required to produce their digital identity card, showing their legal right to reside, to access employment or benefits.
The report said that this would make it harder for undocumented migrants to “disappear” into the informal economy.
The plans became bogged down amid arguments over the cards being linked to state entitlements, with legislation opposed in the Commons and Lords before finally being passed in 2006.
In 2009, however, Alan Johnson, the home secretary, announced they would not be compulsory for UK citizens, and they were scrapped by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010.
Supporters of ID cards argue that two decades on, the data people readily share with social media sites and private companies has tilted the balance on privacy arguments.
Others emphasise that the absence of a universal identity scheme makes Britain more attractive to illegal migrants than other European countries.
Kinnock said: “I think [ID cards] should certainly be on the table, it needs to be properly reviewed and discussed.
I thought it was extraordinary in the wake of Brexit that everybody said, ‘Oh, there are three million EU citizens in the UK’, and it turned out there were five million.
“It is just simply extraordinary that we had two million more people in our country than we thought we did. That is just not sustainable.”
