Sarah Pochin
Main Page: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)Department Debates - View all Sarah Pochin's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 22 hours ago)
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Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
In the previous year, 100,000 people were claiming asylum. The Labour Government were talking about ID cards to tackle illegal immigration, but they soon started talking about using them to tackle all sorts of other things as well. In time, it became apparent that there was a huge amount of disagreement among Ministers, and that the Government had not really thought it through and did not know the full cost. The year I am talking about is 2003, not 2025.
Eventually, 15,000 ID cards were issued under the previous Labour Government’s plan. However, it ran into massive technical issues and cost over-runs. Eventually, they ditched the idea of cards but kept the overbearing database, which is what we see being resurrected today.
Yes, there are pull factors in illegal immigration, and work is one of them. However, Italy has ID cards. It also has one of the world’s highest rates of illegal arrivals by sea. Here, employers are already obliged to do identity and right-to-work checks. By the way, if someone who is a legally resident person signs up to deliver food and then subcontracts that job to someone here illegally in exchange for cash, I fail to see how an ID card or a digital ID would interfere with that at all.
Ministers say that there would be no penalty for not carrying a card and that there would be no stop and search, but it is very hard to see how digital ID or physical ID cards address illegal immigration unless it is possible to demand the card from somebody in the street or in a workplace. And that is precisely the “papers, please” society that we do not want.
Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)
Over 5,400 of my constituents in Runcorn and Helsby have signed this petition. I have also received many, many emails objecting to it. Does the right hon. Member agree with my constituents who all understand that this new digital ID card will not solve the problem of illegal working in this country?
Damian Hinds
I will add that 4,000 of my constituents have signed this petition. I have also heard directly from hundreds of them by email in response to my own petition. We should listen to all these voices.
A lot has changed since 2003, but not my opposition to digital ID. The Government say that it would be non-compulsory, but in practice it would become so. They already talk about opening bank accounts and accessing childcare or benefits with digital ID; of course, in time there will be many more applications for it. It will be one more thing that we will need a smartphone for. That is bad enough in itself, but if digital ID is to be given to children as young as 13, as the Government are consulting on, that will make things far worse again.
Most of all, the worry is about the concentration of data. Yes, we already have massive databases in the private sector, and we all already have a number for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, NHS numbers and all the rest of it. The big change here is the single index term—the single identifier that links all these databases together. However much the Government say that the main database will be federated and access-limited, that cannot take away from the fact that all the databases will be linked. If they were not all linked, it would not be a digital ID system.