Home Office defends ID cards
Home Office minister Andy Burnham has defended the controversial ID cards scheme against claims by a former head of M15 that they would be useless.
Stella Rimington, who retired as director of the security service in 1996, said the programme would be “absolutely useless” in tackling terrorism and organised crime unless the cards could be made tamper-proof.
Speaking to the Association of Colleges annual conference in Birmingham, Dame Stella said she doubted many in the intelligence services were “pressing” for ID cards – and said that, although they were helpful in various ways, they would not necessarily make Britain safer.
However, Mr Burnham this afternoon insisted that Dame Stella’s comments were “actually more balanced than some of the coverage would have us believe”.
He acknowledged that he could not make the claim that the cards were impossible to forge, saying only that in the US, where they have a major system of biometric cards, the system was “operating to an extremely high standards of identity verification”.
Previously the Home Office has admitted “difficulties” in recording biometric data such as the colour of someone’s eyes while, in the aftermath of the London bombings, home secretary Charles Clarke acknowledged ID cards would not have stopped the bombers.
However, he insisted they would make it much harder for people to use multiple identities to hide their activities, as well as helping combat benefit fraud and illegal immigration.
Today, Mr Burnham told BBC Radio Five Live: “We know from terrorist rings and serious and organised crime that they operate through running multiple identities, false passports, false documentation.
“The whole point about this system we are introducing is that by making people come to apply for interview in the first place, and then by registering their unique biometric that can be registered only once, each identity can be registered only once.”
He declared: “I am absolutely certain that is going to be of value to the police.”
The minister admitted the damage done to the scheme by such a high profile speaker as Dame Stella – who “does know a thing or two” – could not be underestimated, but insisted she was not as critical as the media suggested.
“She said ID cards could ‘possibly have some purpose’ and that ‘my angle is they could be of some use’. So she’s saying to us if they are as high standard as you are claiming to be, then they may have some value – that is exactly what I am working on,” he said.
Last month MPs voted in favour of the scheme, and the bill this week underwent scrutiny by peers in the House of Lords, where they called for the government to reveal its full cost estimates to ensure taxpayers would not be put significantly out of pocket.
In addition, many peers are concerned about the creation of a national database of personal information as part of the national ID cards programme, and the implications this could have for individual privacy.
