Gideon Amos
Main Page: Gideon Amos (Liberal Democrat - Taunton and Wellington)Department Debates - View all Gideon Amos's debates with the Cabinet Office
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Robbie Moore
I could not agree more, but I suspect that the Minister will come out and reiterate the lines from the Prime Minister that he was given before the debate.
Just look at the social credit system in China. Facial recognition linked to ID penalises people. Blacklisted citizens cannot buy train or plane tickets, book hotels or apply for certain jobs. This Government have already indicated that migration work and renting will be tied to ID, but how long will it be before future Governments push further and accessing state services is brought under the control and monitoring of digital ID?
We are already seeing signs of such a framework in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the Online Safety Act 2023 and the One Login system. Combined with a formal digital ID, those frameworks would create a world of control for Whitehall and a soulless dystopia for the rest of us. Together, they replace the honesty and decency of human-to-human interaction with an opaque, mechanical “computer says no” future. The scary truth is that control and ID cards hold an appeal for anyone who has access to power. It takes a conscious effort by every one of us to resist the temptation. Power does corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if bad employers are not prevented from taking people on without national insurance numbers or passports, they will not stop at taking someone on without digital ID?
Robbie Moore
I agree. The attitude of control strikes at the very heart of our political traditions. We are a representative democracy, not a command-and-control state. A Government exist by the will of the people, not the other way round. Put simply, we are not a “papers, please” society.
One of the most terrifying elements of the Government’s proposals is that these IDs are to be digital. The national database on which our identities are to be held is a true honeypot for hackers all over the world. To those who say that it will be secure, I say, “Name me a company or Government body that has not had a hacking crisis in recent years.” The NHS, the Co-op, Jaguar Land Rover—I could go on. Even Estonia’s Government lost 280,000 digital ID photos in 2021.