24 September 2008

The Home Secretary will round off the Labour Party conference by re-announcing “ID cards for foreigners”. A system of biometric visas is being introduced for some foreign residents from November, but it is not really part of the National Identity Scheme, which has not been built yet.[1] This fact does not stop the government using the words “ID cards” together with a sly appeal to xenophobia, to buttress support for its unpopular [2] scheme.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s [3] National Coordinator, said:

No doubt the Home Secretary is relieved to be able to wave a plastic card and claim it for the ID scheme, given her department has now spent over £100 million pounds of public money; but this is still a cynical branding exercise.

To suggest 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. All resident foreigners is a different matter. When it comes round to
fingerprinting Madonna and her family, say, such tactics will backfire.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) Biometric visas and registration of “persons subject to immigration control” – which does not and cannot include the EU nationals who make up the bulk of recent immigrants – is being done under the UK Borders Act 2007, not the Identity Cards Act 2006.

2) Approximately half the public is opposed to the scheme, one quarter strongly so. Those polls showing significant majorities in favour generally do so by a question that implies it is a useful response to some threat such as terrorism or immigration:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/issues/id-cards

3) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. Scroll down http://www.no2id.net for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

23 September 2008

Meg Hillier, Labour Minister for Identity, has claimed that children as young as 14 [1] may be given ID cards under government plans. This is a U-turn on assurances given to MPs and the public when the legislation was passed, but there are powers buried in the Identity Cards Act that would allow the Home Secretary to do it by regulation.

Anti-database state campaigners NO2ID [2] derided Ms Hiller’s assertion that the ID scheme – still only limping towards its first
scaled-down pilots [3], more than two years after the Act was passed – could not now be scrapped. The minister seems to be unaware that
officials have been designing the scheme to be disposable [4] since before she came into office. The Conservatives and other opposition
parties have promised to repeal the legislation completely.

Phil Booth, NO2ID National Coordinator said:

How desperate have they become to start picking on children? What started life as Mr Blunkett’s essential tool against terror is now
being pitched by a junior minister as a glorified proof-of-age card.
Having failed to convince the unions, the airline industry or the public at large, the government is now seeking any soft targets it can.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) Speaking at a “No ID No Sale” fringe meeting at Labour Party conference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7630088.stm

2) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of
‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

3) The TUC has voted to oppose compulsory ID cards for airside workers, and the much-vaunted introduction of ‘ID cards for foreign
nationals’ has been downscaled to just 50,000 cards issued before April 2009: http://www.printweek.com/business/news/847818/TUC-vows-fight-discriminatory-ID-cards-trial/

4) From a leaked e-mail exchange between senior officials, June 2006:
“we are designing the strategy so that they are all sensible and viable contracts in their own right even if the ID card gets canned completely.” – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article684968.ece

*UPDATE* Phil Booth will be speaking this evening at another fringe event, co-sponsored by the British Computer Society, entitled ‘Privacy and Security in the Database State’. The meeting, free to enter *without* ID, will start at 7:00pm in the University of Manchester Reynolds Building, C2 (Sackville Street Campus).

10 September 2008

The TUC in Brighton, has pledged to resist the identity scheme “with all means at its disposal”. [1] The motion was carried overwhelmingly.

This puts unions on a collision course with the government over civil liberties, and contrasts with the government spin that “unions approve ID cards” [2] issued after the Labour Party National Policy Forum at Warwick at the end of July.

The motion, from the airline pilots’ union, BALPA draws particular attention to the Home Office plans timetabled for next year on to force airside workers to register on the National Identity Register for life, as a condition of having a job.

But there are implications for everyone in employment. An astonished TUC fringe meeting on Monday evening heard from Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID [3], of the provisions in the Identity Cards Act 2006 that ministers have confirmed could mean 10 years imprisonment for industrial action that might interfere with the operation of the ID database.[4]

Unions certainly did not approve that, even if 304 Labour MPs saw fit to vote for it. The Tolpuddle Martyrs got shorter sentences, and that was a public outrage in an era when you could be hanged for stealing goods worth a shilling,

he said.

Herbert said of today’s vote:

The Home Office has almost given up pretending that its ID scheme is necessary for national security. Those involved in aviation security day-to-day don’t believe it. Now the plan is that ID will confront us in the workplace – as a form of official permission to earn a living. We are delighted that the unions and their members will be ready to fight it.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1) TUC Agenda is online at:

http://www.tuc.org.uk/congress/tuc-15221-f0.pdf

Motion 45 text in full is:
45 National Identity Scheme

British Air Line Pilots’ Association

2) See,

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/opinion-former-index/legal-and-constitutional/unions-approve-id-cards-$1233673.htm

3) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of
‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

4) The provisions form s29 of the Identity Cards Act 2006

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2006/ukpga_20060015_en_3#pb8-l1g29

When this point was raised in parliament Baroness Amos confirmed for the Government that this is a valid interpretation – “absolutely right in their analysis” (Lords Hansard 21 Mar 2005 Col.105) but it has never been mentioned again and the opportunity to redraft it was not taken. Anyone, anywhere information from the database is used could be affected.