ID card rollout begins

[Ian Batten]

>>
>>
>> Immigration and Asylum Act, 1996, section 8 uses the words ``appeared
>> to him to relate to the employee''.  Several summaries on government
>> websites, such as this use wording like ``Employers should ensure  
>> that
>> the document presented appears to be the original, appears to relate
>> to the applicant ...
>
> I would imagine that "appearing to relate" will in future include  
> checking the biometrics.

I'd be stunned if it did.

Firstly, what does `checking the biometrics' mean?  `Checking'  
photographs falls into the `appears to relate' category: it's entirely  
subjective.  ``Yeah, it looked like him, but maybe it was a bit dark  
in the room''.   If the government cares to underwrite providing  
fingerprint readers to every employer in the country, let them try,  
but I suspect the multi-billion pound bill may prove a little rich for  
their appetite.

But secondly, the vast majority of acceptable documents don't contain  
biometrics other than photographs, and many not even that.  Passports  
less than a couple of years old have an encoded photograph, but that  
doesn't strengthen things much.  That problem isn't going to be solved  
in any timescale that a Labour government need concern itself (ie  
eighteen months).  Both the Tories and the Lib Dems (and, by  
implication, any coalition that one or both of them may be involved  
in) have scrapping the whole ID card programme as a manifesto  
commitment.   The chances of the biometric of anyone bar non-EU  
citizens being present on documents before the government is voted out  
are approximately zero, and after Brown is packed off to Scotland  
never to be heard of again we can assume that ID cards are dead for a  
generation.  We'll probably need to fight the battles again in about  
2020.