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ID cards a "public good," says government

Home Office minister compares national identity scheme to railways and the national grid.

By Nicole Kobie, 19 Jun 2007 at 17:58

The controversial national identity scheme will be a twenty-first century public good comparable to railways and the national grid, a Home Office minister said today.

Liam Bryne, the Minister of State for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality, told a conference in London today that increasing internet use, international travel and databases of personal information bring benefits, but also risks which require strong identity technology.

"Unless we invest in identity systems we leave our borders and our economy open to abuse, we leave individuals defenceless against fraud and we risk leaving the benefits safety nets we've worked so hard for, vulnerable to attack," Byrne said in his speech.

He said the national identity scheme will become ubiquitous in everyday life in the same way railways did in the 19th century and the national grid did last century. The scheme, which includes e-passports and identity cards, is expected to cost £5.3 billion over the next decade.

"In 20 years time, I suspect that the National Identity Scheme will be a part and parcel of everyday life in Britain - another great British institution without which modern life, whatever it looks like in 2020, would be quite unthinkable," he said.

He said a national identity system should be a public project to avoid creating too many competing schemes for economic and security reasons.

"If we persist with this public and private laissez-faire, it is frankly easy to see how, before long in Britain, the day will come when we have a mish-mash of unregulated, potentially unsafe systems, mushrooming in growth and size in a way that is just uneconomic," Byrne said.

Byrne also said the government must continue to try to push down costs and may need to strengthen parliamentary accountability.

According to his speech, biometric visas have helped immigration catch out 4,000 applicants for withholding information, such as applying under a different name. Close to 70 per cent of such matches are to fingerprint data collected in the UK from failed asylum seekers, he claimed, while eight per cent of such matchers were to people previously not allowed to remain in the country.