National Identity Cards

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the main reasons to have the card is for a person to protect their identity and get access to all the things that can now be done digitally online. When I started the cybersecurity policy and we did all the work with the banks and stock exchanges, we found that it was best to have cards for individuals, with biometrics that can be used with computers—for people’s own security. All this other stuff about checking up on people and everything is a sideline as far as I am concerned. It is actually to save the identity and personal details of the individuals in this country and enable them to get digital access to all the new systems that are coming. The only way of doing that, as we found with the banks and stock exchanges, is to have some sort of card—calling it an identity card gets everyone terribly excited—that has biometrics on to let them do it safely.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect, it would appear that matters have moved on because we are now in the realms of digital identification, where cards are not required. Indeed, the Government’s own site makes provision for digital identification.