Identity Cards Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for International Development
Earl of Erroll
Main Page: Earl of Erroll (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Earl of Erroll's debates with the Department for International Development
(5 years ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord makes a very good point about the new technologies that the police and airports are using. I heard about the trial of facial imagery at Heathrow Airport. Now, every time you go through a gate at an airport, a machine recognises you by your face. However, he is absolutely right that the governance of the use of facial imagery, fingerprints and the new emerging technologies has to be looked at very carefully.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
Does the noble Baroness’s department have a corporate memory of the fact that during the war we had identity cards for three purposes? Soon after the war, these were extended to around 50 purposes. As a result, we had a bonfire of ID cards in about 1952, for very good reasons. We are not a country that likes being controlled by various authoritarian people.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Earl is absolutely right, and that was at the heart of our reason, in the coalition years, for resisting the idea of ID cards. He will of course know that I do not remember the war.