Show us your papers

ID cards. The policy that no-one seems to want but which keeps coming back. Today, it's the news that internal Home Office papers show the full scheme has been put back at least two years.

There's no way of knowing yet if this is an official leak, buttering us up for a statement that shows the scheme has been massively scaled back, or a genuine cock-up. At the moment, it appears that only foreign nationals and those with "sensitive jobs" will be given ID cards before the next general election. To our eyes, that looks like a scaling-back to something more palatable to the electorate - an ID scheme for pesky Polish builders and MoD officials with sensitive laptops, but not for the rest of us.

David Davis is claiming this is all about pushing the scheme back to the other side of a general election, but that makes no sense to us. Debates over a future ID scheme are likely to be as bad, if not worse, than debates over a recently-introduced scheme, unless the recent introduction was an operational disaster. Which it will be (see Dizzy, passim).

The full statement from the Identity and Passport Service, quoted on the BBC, looks like this:

"As stated in the Strategic Plan for the National Identity Scheme published in December 2006, we will begin issuing ID cards for foreign nationals this year, and the first ID cards for British citizens in 2009."

He said they would make it easier for businesses and government to check identities "securely, conveniently and efficiently".

But he said the date for introducing cards with fingerprints "in line with international developments in passport security" was "under consideration" and further announcements would be made in due course.

So the foundations of a future direction can maybe seen there. Special ID cards for foreign nationals and those with "sensitive" jobs. Biometric passports for the rest of us. Seems rather sensible, doesn't it?

Written by Lloyd Shepherd on 23 Jan 2008 10:52 AM. Permalink

Department of Doublespeak