FAQ
- What are ID cards?
- The cards will be a credit card-sized photo card and will include a computer chip. Although no examples of what the card will look like have been made available by the Home Office, they are likely to look something like existing driving licenses.
- Why is the UK getting identity cards?
- The Government has suggested that the new measures introduced by the Identity Cards Bill will tackle a number of issues, such as terrorism, identity theft, illegal immigration and benefit fraud.
- What is the National Identity Register?
- The National Identity Register (NIR) is the giant database that will be used to hold information about you. It will follow your actions from cradle to grave and the information recorded ranges from name, address and date of birth to a record of all the occasions on which your card has been used.
- Does everyone in Parliament back the plans?
- Only New Labour were originally for the cards. Many senior politicians put it on record that they would go to prison rather than ever carry the card. However a deal was struck with Michael Howard’s Conservatives meaning the bill was finally passed to the House of Lords.
The House of Lords rejected the ID cards scheme five times, before again agreeing a meaningless compromise deal allowing you to opt out of having a card until 2008.
The Conservatives have promised to abandon any ID Card and NIR scheme if they win the next election.
- How much will ID cards and the National Identity Register cost?
- The government has refused to make public what the entire scheme is estimated to cost claiming that if we knew it would hinder their ability to get a cheap deal with the companies given contracts to implement the scheme. However the London School of Economics produced a report in June 2005 which put the cost of the ID scheme at a possible £19bn, assuming that nothing went wrong in its implementation. Since then, serious issues with its implementation have been leaked from government sources.
Estimates of the cost-per-head of the system vary widely. There have been widely varying estimates of the cost to the individual, from the £93 official Home Office quote to the £300 of the LSE report. In addition to this initial cost, the Bill requires payment to register any changes in the data held on the National Identity Register (NIR), for example a new address.
- Do other countries have ID cards?
- France had a complusory ID card in 1940 which was implemented to help the Nazi authorities identify 76,000 people for deportation as part of the Holocaust. Since then France has abandoned a compulsory ID card. The police can request confirmation of your identity but cannot demand the voluntary card. There is also no link of a specific biometric card to a database record on you.
Germany has a compulsory ID card introduced by the Nazis and although it has not removed ID cards, the German Constitution forbids any government linking the cards to a persons record.
Spain also introduced ID cards under fascist regimes in the 1930s. Since the introduction of the cards they now suffer from some of the worse illegal immigration in Europe and have had multiple terrorist atrocities in recent years – the very things that our government sold ID cards as a tool of preventing.
The USA, Australia, Denmark, India, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and nearly all other developed countries have no form of compulsory Identity Card
