Jim Allister
Main Page: Jim Allister (Traditional Unionist Voice - North Antrim)Department Debates - View all Jim Allister's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 22 hours ago)
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Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
The scale of the response to this petition—almost 3 million people—should cause us all to pause. This rash proposal has clearly touched a deep-seated opposition among our constituents to anyone interfering with their personal data and personal details. Almost 5,000 of my constituents are among that number, and I well understand and support their opposition.
Yes, digital ID might be convenient and it might be expedient for some people to have all their data in one location that they can share, but the key issue here is that the Government are choosing—without a mandate—to make it mandatory. It would be a different matter if the Government were coming to this House to say, “We are going to provide a facility whereby, if you wish, you can have the convenience of this: if you want to take the risk of being hacked, we will provide the facility,” but when they say to the citizen, “You must,” or, “We will impose,” they have crossed a line that no self-respecting Government should cross and that no self-respecting people should tolerate.
That, for me, is the critical component: this is a Government who think they know better and who will impose it, and we will be left with no choice as citizens. That is so illiberal, so fundamentally an assault on our personal freedoms, that no one in this House should be entertaining it, least of all the Government.
Mr Mohindra
The hon. and learned Gentleman is making an excellent contribution, as always. If this is such an important issue, why was it not in the governing party’s manifesto at the last general election?
Jim Allister
That is a question that I obviously cannot answer, and it is one that I doubt the Minister will answer, but it is well posed. Why, oh why, if the Government were going to impinge on the personal liberties of their citizens, would they not, in asking for their votes, tell them that that was their agenda?
Jamie Stone
As Chair of the Petitions Committee, I must of course be fair minded and impartial at all times, but the hon. and learned Member might be acquainted with the fact that I represent the most remote mainland constituency in the whole of the UK. Let me just put this point: we do know what digital exclusion is.
Jim Allister
As I represent North Antrim, I know of many parts of my constituency where people cannot get the digital connections that are supposedly promised, and I know what digital exclusion is in that regard as well. This proposition is flawed no matter which way we look at it, but most fundamentally flawed in the compulsion that it brings.
The final point that I want to make to the Minister is this: whatever happens on this subject—I trust the idea will be ditched in its entirety—and whatever the ultimate outcome is, it has to be a nationwide outcome. Too often, I have seen differences of treatment in my part of the United Kingdom that add to the already obnoxious situation in which we are partitioned by an Irish sea border. We do not want to be partitioned by a digital border as well.