Russell Brown
Main Page: Russell Brown (Labour - Dumfries and Galloway)Department Debates - View all Russell Brown's debates with the Home Office
(14 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe Home Secretary is talking about the abolition of the scheme. Is she telling the House, and the wider country, that the abolition of the scheme will include foreign nationals coming to this country?
No. I shall come to that point later. There are biometric residency permits for foreign nationals and they are completely separate from the identity card scheme. They were rolled into the ID scheme only because the Labour Government were trying desperately to bolster it; they claimed that the residency permits were somehow part of the ID card scheme, which they are not. Those biometric residency permits will continue to exist.