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ID card scheme faces new stumbling block over fingerprinting
Martin Bentham, Home Affairs Editor25.09.08
Jacqui Smith today admitted that it will be impossible to include fingerprints of some people on the Government's ID cards.
The revelation will raise new doubts about the effectiveness of the scheme. But the Home Secretary claimed such difficulties were "wholly exceptional" and said efforts to obtain alternative biometric data which could be used instead were under way.
Her admission, however, is likely to be seized on by opponents as further evidence that the £4.7billion-ID card scheme will be unworkable as well as unnecessarily expensive.
The Home Secretary's comments came at a Westminster news conference as she unveiled a first identity card for foreign nationals.
The card is due to be released in November for all foreign students from outside the European Economic area - the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein - and to migrants seeking marriage visas.
The card is due to be rolled out to all foreign nationals who visit from outside the European Economic area for more than six months by 2011 and Ms Smith said it would improve national security and help combat fraud and illegal immigration.
She denied that problems with obtaining fingerprints from a minority of people - such as the elderly or those with missing fingers - would undermine the scheme but admitted that the Government was still working to find a solution to such difficulties.
"It is so exceptional that it will not undermine the fundamental nature of the scheme," she said. "In the very, very few cases of people who cannot give a fingerprint we are looking at mechanisms to deal with those categories. It will be wholly exceptional."
Despite her assurances, the Home Secretary's admission is likely to be seized upon by opponents who claim that problems with obtaining biometric data will undermine the effectiveness of the scheme.
Earlier today, ministers were accused of picking on "soft targets" as the card was launched to the public.
Opponents claimed that ministers risked harming race relations by engaging in "populist bullying" of foreign migrants.
Phil Booth, the national co-ordinator of the campaign group NO2ID, said: "To suggest that ID cards are somehow connected to immigration policy, Jacqui Smith is deliberately engaging in populist bullying of the soft targets - anonymous individuals seeking marriage visas or education - those who have no choice but to keep quiet and comply."
The Tories have already promised to cancel the scheme if elected at the next election and the Liberal Democrats are similarly opposed.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of pressure group Liberty, also attacked the scheme and said: "Picking on foreigners first is divisive politics - as costly to our race relations as our purses."
Reader views (9)
How exactly is it going to control illegal immigration? If foreign nationals from outside the EU visiting for more than 6 months have to have an ID card does this mean that there is going to be random checks on "foreigners" asking to look at their ID cards. How are they going to prove that they are not visiing for a week or two weeks? I grew up in a country where everyone had an ID book but the officious authorities of course only demanded to see ID from one particular race and if they could not produce this, were thrown into police vans and taken to police stations. It was called South Africa.
- Patricia, LONDON
Hardly a stumbling block. A note in the data about the missing finger(s) or arm(s) would provide a fairly easily spotted identity marker.
But talking of stumbling blocks: how much is the latest cost estimate? And is it safer and more secure than chip and pin is...er...was?
Nao
- Naomi Sajeri, Manchester
Watching Question time last night it seemed clear there was only one person in the room, apart from the Govt. plant in the audience, who as in favour of ID cards and that was Hazel Blears.
- Adam, Harrow, UK
Perhaps they should play safe and permanently intern all people with missing fingers to ensure the card is foolproof.
- George, London
There is far more to the new ID Card system than the Home Secretary tells us. Long term plans to monitor your movements and communications have moved on significantly. Your travel information, your phone and text records, your e-mail and internet usage are to be monitored. Your personal details trafficked ever more widely among officials and to foreign powers.
The new 'facial recognition' and electronically scanned passports, called e-Borders, is about collecting massive amounts of detailed information on every traveller for official use, and while government spin says it is about 'foreigners', the system applies with even greater force to UK citizens.
Staying at home will not protect you from official snooping. Local Authorities have been given spy powers. For years, hundreds of bodies have been able to authorise themselves to examine any of your phone, e-mail, text and web-browsing histories that have been held by phone and internet companies. Now the Home Office is making that easier, and massive funding has been committed to build a huge database of all communications data, risking loss or criminal use of very private information.
Gordon Brown did not mention that in his speech, when he said we should trust him.
- Wat Tyler, Midlands
Yeah, right. How many people do you know who don't have fingerprints? About the same number as don't have arms and hands I expect. Claiming that ID cards have hit a stumbling block over it is pretty lame. The vast majority of us have fingerprints - for example, our jails are full of people with perfectly readable fingerprints, and thank goodness for that!
- Mike, London
People in the UK from the EU / EEA will presumably just have to show their passport to prove their identity. If this is good enough for those from the EU / EEA, why isn't it good enough for those from Britain? The whole ID policy is wrong in principle and discriminatory against Britons.
- Royston, London, England
Jacqui will come a cropper with her daft and expensive ID cards scheme. The British are incredibly disinterested in politics, but the ID card will hit them right between the eyes like an STI - completely unexpected. And once the little Hitlers among us, the council jobsworths, the parking wardens, the litter police, the dog mess patrols, the sausage roll (dropping of) monitors and many others in the "peaked cap" brigade start demanding to see our ID card in that officious tone that is almost unique to Britain, I predict that the usually tolerant British people will rise up as one and denounce Jacqui and her minders in a very deliberate manner. Back in the 1950s it took just one motorist to face down an officious police officer and the wartime ID card was toast. This is what will happen this time, too. Except it will have cost us taxpayers several billion quid to teach the government a lesson.
- Mike Mitchell, Spalding, England
How come the rest of Europe can come up with a cost effective and workable ID card scheme and the British can not? Britain used to lead the world in innovation, sadly it now leads only in corruption and incompetence.
- Casper Slides, Ibiza, Spain
