"Independent Scheme Assurance Panel" report on ID cards published.

[Ian Batten]

On 9 May 2008, at 09:04, Peter Tomlinson wrote:

> I wonder if that story about air-side airport workers not being  
> fully checked for past bad behaviour, allegedly uncovered by  
> Newsnight, was in fact a plant, aimed at encouraging us to support  
> the fast track issuing of ID Cards to air-side workers, which of  
> course will need proper investigation of their bona-fides (and it  
> will result in the issuing of UK ID Cards to those who are already  
> citizens of another EU country, and eResident cards for those who  
> are third country nationals).

The problem is _how_ do you do that investigation, and do you trust  
the result?  I recall being told that there is a process for obtaining  
clearance for non-UK nationals, for cases which don't otherwise  
require UK citizenship, but I suspect it has `governments we trust'  
caveat.  How does getting a certificate of non-conviction from a  
foreign country?  How do you pay for it?  How do you cope with  
differing `spent convictions' rules?  For example, we now know that  
Austria regards rape convictions more than ten years previously as  
spent: how would that play for an CRB check in the UK, enhanced or not?

ian