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DeliciousDriving licence could be ID card
Wednesday, October 22, 2008Home Officer minister Meg Hillier has confirmed that, if they wanted to, they could designate the driving licence to work as an ID card.
Speaking at the Biometrics 2008 conference she said that in time "it is possible to designate the driving licence or other documents to be counted as an ID card".
A ruling under the Identity Cards Act 2006 means the Home Secretary can re-designate documents so that anyone applying for said documents will then have their details placed onto the National Identity Register.
In her speech, Hillier also detailed the benefits of the ID card, explaining to delegates that it would simplify actions like age checks, criminal record checks and bank loan applications. From 2015 ID cards will also be integral to accessing public services like TV licences, tax returns and incapacity benefit.
Opponents of the scheme have said this latest announcement is evidence that the government is trying to force everyone onto the scheme.
Phil Booth, national co-ordinator for NO2ID, said: "It is clearly a compulsory scheme if in order to continue driving, travelling abroad or get a loan you have to be registered on the scheme.
"It is coercion up to the point of compulsion."
Simon Davies, director of human rights group Privacy International, said: "It will bring almost the entire population into the scheme.
"The question is, will this just be the first of many databases to connect into the ID card system? There is the communication data database that has funding already and even this proposed database of mobile phone registrations."
Meg Hillier's statement of the law is inaccurate.
There's no new ruling: designation of documents is a statutory power of the Home Office in s4 of the Act. Designating a document does not, *pace* Ms Hillier, make it into an ID card (or make it 'count as' one, whatever that means). What it does, is make it a condition of applying for such a document that you *also* apply to be placed on the national identity register - which is permanent and entails an obligation to keep the Home Office informed as to any changes in any "registrable facts" about you.
Ms Hillier may have *asserted* to delegates that this will 'simplify' various everyday transactions, but I sincerely doubt that she coherently explained *how* it would do so to insert the Home Office as man-in-the-middle in every one of them.
Guy Herbert, General Secretary NO2ID - London
I really do not know why people are so frightened about ID cards. After all - the majority of law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear and it certainly is easier than lugging loads of stuff around.
Nicky