Labour to launch ID card - and it'll cost you £25

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://news.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/20/nid20.xml&site=5>

The Telegraph

Labour to launch ID card - and it'll cost you £25 
By Colin Brown and Francis Elliott 
(Filed: 20/04/2003) 

Everyone in Britain will have to pay around £25 for a compulsory
identity card under proposals being put to the cabinet by David
Blunkett, the Home Secretary.

The "smart" card will identify the holder using iris-recognition
technology. Failure to carry the card will not be an offence but
police will be able to order people to present it at a police station.

The charge is aimed at overcoming resistance to the scheme from the
Treasury. Until now Cabinet support for a national compulsory identity
card has been outweighed by the Treasury, which has objected to
footing the estimated £1.6 billion bill.

While forcing people to pay for the card could add to the anticipated
objections from human rights campaigners, Mr Blunkett believes that
concern about national security is sufficient to ensure that
individuals will be prepared to bear the cost.

Mr Blunkett is confident that he can win support for the idea of a
compulsory card even though previous ministers have failed.

One Home Office official said that the threat of international
terrorism following the September 11 attacks had tilted public opinion
in favour of such a scheme. "The atmosphere has changed," he said.

Another official discounted any suggestion that the public would baulk
at the cost. "We think that a charge of £25 to £30 would be reasonable
for five years and once it is up and running and the initial cost is
out of the way, you could then extend the life of the card for 10
years," he said.

Senior figures in the Cabinet strongly support the plan for the card,
which would use a microchip to hold details including age, place of
birth, home address and a personal number to identify the holder. It
is also hoped that the card could be used to entitle the holder to a
range of state benefits, thereby cutting benefit fraud.

Mr Blunkett discussed his plan for a national ID card with Tom Ridge,
the head of the US Department of Homeland Security, at a meeting in
Washington earlier this month. Mr Blunkett agreed to develop a joint
programme, using the same technology, with the US, which has already
agreed a similar protocol with Canada.

Iris recognition - so-called biometric information - is considered a
more accurate and fraud-proof system than fingerprint or photo
identification. The Home Office has already piloted the use of the
technology. The UK Passport Office last year issued 500 passport cards
with iris data.

In another move to tighten security, ministers are to ban the practice
of sending out passports by ordinary mail after a Home Office audit
found that some 3,000 are still being "lost in the post" each year.

Two years after The Telegraph first highlighted the problem of
thousands of missing passports, the Home Office has admitted that
2,982 were lost in the post during 2002. The vast majority are stolen
by criminal gangs and sold on to illegal immigrants or possibly
terrorists.

Beverley Hughes, the immigration minister, has ordered that people
applying for a passport must in future pay for them to be sent by
recorded delivery, ensuring that someone has to sign for them on
receipt.

The increased cost of this - up to £5 for each passport - would be
borne by the applicant for the passport in increased fees.


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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