ID card rollout begins

[Peter Tomlinson]

Ian Batten wrote:
>>> 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.
This isn't being driven by elected people.

Peter