Dear Mrs Jowell,
Thank you for your letter of 23 August 2005 and the response from the Home Office that was attached. I found the Trade Off report referred to in Mr Clarke’s response most enlightening, although the study did seem deeply flawed. In order for the Trade Off research to be of value, it requires a detailed look at the costs of having the card, not just in terms of the financial burden, but also of the added inconvenience of the scheme, the risks attached to consolidated databases, the difficulties that may arise if the card is lost or stolen, the likely frequency with which amendments to the information will be required, the costs of making those amendments, and so forth. It would have also been useful to have had access to the questionnaire that was used to create the statistics, but this did not seem to be present on the Home Office website.
I found Mr Clarke’s response disturbing. The Home Office’s stance (or “what we say” as the Home Secretary puts it) appears to be that, as we are asked to prove our identity on a daily basis, the HO should make it as easy as possible for people to do so. But it simply isn’t true that we are required to prove who we are on a daily basis. If, when the Home Office says this, it is in reference to such things as withdrawing cash from automatic telling machines, or using work ID cards to gain access to buildings, then it is a flawed supposition. We have a bankcard that carries information about our bank accounts, we have a work ID to demonstrate we have authorised access to certain buildings. The provision of a biometric ID card will only add to the ID we already have, unless the Home Office wishes every ATM to have a number of biometric readers. Banks and building societies are already grumbling at the costs of maintaining the relatively simple machines currently in use. If the machines are also to bear fingerprint and iris scanners, these costs will increase further.
What is more the Home Office is wilfully making this misrepresentation. In December 2004 Cragg Ross Dawson formulated a report entitled Identity Cards: The Public’s Response to Proposed Customer Propositions in which it is stated clearly that the public do not identify with the picture of an endless need to prove one’s identity that has been painted by the Home Office.
In virtually the same breath Clarke goes on to suggest that, if the card system is in place, the Government will be able to ensure that only those eligible for public services receive them. He suggests that we have to prove our identity more and more, and then goes on to suggest we don’t prove our identity enough! I fail to see how Clarke can make both arguments simultaneously; that he wants to make our lives easier and more complicated.
Charles Clarke also suggests that the ID card would be ideal for young people to carry instead of their passports as a means of proving they are over 18. Despite the fact that there is already a card in existence that serves this purpose (one that is cheaper, and does not have a limitless and expensive database behind it), we are being told that these cards will be necessary to prove our identity on a day-to-day basis, meaning that although the card will cost “no more than thirty pounds” their value (unless they won’t actually be as useful as Mr Clarke believes) will be far in excess of a passport that we will only need when travelling outside of Europe. A person losing an ID card will be far more inconvenienced than someone losing their passport.
I also note that the Passport Office, in their recent press release concerning the new standards for passport photos and (although it seems quite unconnected) the introduction of ID cards and the NIR, quoted the amount lost through identity fraud at £1.8 billion figure again. This, despite the fact that the figure has been brought into serious question in the national press. I reiterate that the ID Card Bill will not stop most of the £1.8 billion from being lost.
Furthermore, by consolidating information into a single database, the Bill will serve to create a “honey pot” that will draw hackers in the same way that the consolidation of the US welfare database did in America, leading to an increase in ID theft. Also, by selling the card as an unhackable, uncopiable, gold standard of ID, you open the door to criminals who have managed to secure false ID cards by means of corrupt operatives; have managed to fabricate entries in the registry of births, deaths and marriages, acquired a fake birth certificate or passport and used it to gain a Government created ID card; or managed to hack the technology itself in order to create forged cards. I need not remind you that last year the defence systems of the United States were hacked by a British citizen with the cracking equivalent of a hair-pin.
I’m also somewhat alarmed at the refusal of the Home Office to engage, in public, with criticisms made of the Bill with reference to civil rights. This, despite the fact that its own reports make these criticisms clear. The Fifth Report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights “raises concerns about the compatibility of provisions of the Bill with the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and the right to non-discrimination in the protection of the Convention rights under Article 14 ECHR.” In the Commissioner for Human Rights’ report for the Council of Europe he, although not disagreeing in principle with the card, raised concerns regarding the range of information stored: “an identity card should be no more than its name suggests – a document containing sufficient information, and no more, than is necessary for establishing an individual’s identity for relevant administrative purposes.” Given that this is in keeping with the reason given by the Government for the card, this suggests the NIR (which will undoubtedly make up the bulk of the costs) will largely not be required. Nevertheless, because Civil Liberties are seen as a minority issue (freedom, after all, is wasted on the free), none of these issues have been discussed with anything like the depth that seems fitting.
A further concern is the Home Office’s continuing refusal to explain how its figures can be so far below those of the LSE. The recent decision to outsource the processing of the registry for Births, Deaths & Marriages may hold a clue. Are we to understand that the NIR too, will be processed offshore? We are already aware of the fact that such operatives are corruptible, and that the practice of selling credit card information is already widespread. Wouldn’t it be more convenient for them to be corrupted in this country?
Tony Blair had suggested at a press conference prior to the reading that he wanted the Bill to be passed so that debate could begin. The Select Committee was given over two hundred amendments to the bill to discuss and out of these, not a single change to the bill was made. It seems, based on both the urgent timetable and the committee’s unlikely finding that the Bill doesn’t need any kind of amendment (a view certainly not held by Tony McNulty, who predicts that the move to compulsion will bounce back and forth between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, safely beyond the reach of the Parliament Act) that no debate of any value has taken place. What is more, Mr Blair’s statement was clearly aimed at talking round Labour MPs still not keen on the Bill. I can only suspect that, given that the ensuing debate has failed, these Labour MPs will now reverse their position on the Bill and vote against it, leaving the Government in a potentially embarrassing position whereby they will have to explain how a select committee, without making any amendments, came up with a Bill less popular than in its previous reading.
But insensitivity to these possibilities should not be surprising. In a time when Labour is faced with a reduced minority, and its leaders and ministers are paying lip service to the rebuilding of trust between politicians and voters, we find the first Bill that has tested the new House has been pushed through by forming unbalanced select committees, by blatantly ignoring any experts that dare to disagree with Labour’s position, by misrepresenting intelligence, by the false promises and the same kind of cheap diversionary tactics that have led to the mistrust in the first place. The government claim they want a debate, yet eschew it at every turn. For instance, the Home Office has done little to counter the criticisms posed by Steve Webb with regards the probability that the half million plus illegal immigrants being obstructed from getting health services would lead to possible epidemics when infectious diseases would be allowed to go unchecked. The Home Office’s response, that a card would never be required to gain access to emergency services, rather depends on a diagnosis that would never be provided. Charles Clarke’s attempts to win people over to the scheme are ultimately detrimental to his cause. When faced with people he considers paranoid, woolly thinkers with outmoded concerns such as civil liberties, he attempts to appease their concerns by claiming not only that the Big Brother state is already here, but that it is his job to control it!
It is everybody’s duty to decide what sort of world we live in. Those who are willing to buy into the proposed ID scheme, expensive, purposeless, unworkable, have made the decision, wittingly or otherwise, to move towards the kind of crazed world more likely encountered in a Terry Gilliam film than in real life. There has been no satisfactory debate over the ramifications of the Bill for the simple reason that the Bill will not stand up to considered and informed scrutiny. I urge you to reverse your standing on the Bill and vote against it at the forthcoming reading.
Yours sincerely,
Simon Scott.
