Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of introducing identity cards as a means of tracking the use of public services, monitoring anti-social and criminal behaviour, and collecting immigration statistics.

The Government has no plans to introduce an identity card system for British citizens. We abolished the previous administration's expensive and ineffective identity cards scheme in 2010.

Biometric Residence Permits are issued to non-EEA nationals staying in the UK for more than six months. These provide evidence of the holders' immigration status in the UK. The Government has also introduced a series of robust new measures through the Immigration Act 2014 to prevent those migrants here illegally from accessing a range of public services to which they are not entitled.