National Identity Cards

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Off the top of my head, no, I cannot.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the greatest civil liberties is to not have your identity stolen. We have found in the banking world, and other worlds, that by having biometric cards that identify clearly who you are this can be avoided; these cards cannot be duplicated easily because they are biometric. I have no doubt whatever, and I would be interested to know whether or not the Minister agrees, that we will inevitably end up having a card—whatever we call it—in order for our people not to have their identity stolen.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I do recognise what the noble Lord said, particularly in terms of identity fraud. One of the things we are doing is working with banks because it is such a huge financial loss when people fraudulently open bank accounts or take money from other people’s accounts. E-passports now have facial recognition, which is a very good system of identification—but we will not be moving to the identity card scheme.