ID card timetable unveiled

Jacqui Smith has unveiled the timetable for the introduction of the national identity card.

 

Foreign nationals will be required to give their biometric details from this year, and from next year, the scheme will extend to British people working in high-risk areas, such as airports, the home secretary has said.

 

From 2010, students and young people will be encouraged to provide their details voluntarily, and from 2011 onwards, anyone applying for a passport will be added to the national identity register.

 

"Increasingly, we need to be able to prove our identity in a whole range of ways: when we're travelling, when we're opening a bank account or accessing government services.

 

"We're all better protected if we can be confident that other people are who they say they are," Smith said.

 

The controversial ID scheme will see everyone's personal details stored on a plastic card with a microchip and will cost £5.6bn over 10 years, according to government estimates.

 

Following a series of government losses of personal data, Smith said that the ID card would actually help secure people's identity and personal details.

 

"One of the reasons why we worry about our details being lost, whoever it's by, is because at the moment, if somebody has what we call your biographical details - your name, your address, your date of birth - actually they can quite easily go and open a bank account in your name, or commit a crime using your identity.

 

"The fact that the national identity scheme links not just your details, but links it  - incidentally on a separate database - to biometric information about you, to your fingerprints, means that it is much more difficult, even if someone does get hold of details about you, for them to use it to commit fraud or commit a crime."

 

Smith earlier told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that only "relatively thin" amounts of personal data would be kept on the database which would not include medical and tax records or details of access to public services.

 

And the information would be kept separately from biometric information which would be accessible only to "highly security cleared individuals with a whole range of other security arrangements".

 

The database would not be online so was safe from hackers, she insisted.

 

She confirmed that Parliament would not be asked to consider making ID cards compulsory before the next general election - which must be held by May 2010.

 

Shadow home secretary, David Davis, said: "The government is contriving to implement, by spin and by stealth, it's now utterly discredited plan for ID cards.

 

"The home secretary's claim that she is offering people a choice is misleading – identity cards will still be compulsory. Her suggestion that there won't be a central database is pure spin – personal details will still be clustered on a national identity register, a sitting target for criminal hackers and terrorists.

 

"The government has lost the argument. They have lost 25 million personal records. And they have lost the public's trust. It's time they faced up to these stark truths - and ditched ID cards for good."