Passport Applications: Digitisation

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

There are a number of biometrics through which a person can be compared—it could be a photograph or fingerprints. The biometrics that we use on the British passport are very robust.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

I almost get the impression that the noble Baroness is saying that we have identity cards, but we simply call them passports. To go back to the Question, she seemed to give the Answer that the new system is exactly the same as the old one. I am not knocking the advances, as with facial recognition you have an electronic means of verifying that the individual in front of you is the person they say they are. However, that was clearly also true with old-fashioned photographs, which were much more difficult to manipulate. The problem surely is that digital photographs are much easier to manipulate and the possibility of fraud rises. I do not believe they are exactly the same, and if she wants to persist in that argument—I am sure it is what her brief says—I would be grateful if she would write to us with a little more explanation of the security measures that guarantee the validity of the electronic image.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord suggests that a passport is the same as an identity card, but actually it is a form of ensuring that the person’s identity is what they say it is.