Gaping holes in identity plan
SINCE Labour’s last botched attempt to bring in an identity scheme in the 2000s, much has changed.
Most of us are now familiar with using a smartphone to pay for things and access services.
Sir Keir Starmer has no mandate for forcing digital ID plan upon Britain – what he was elected to do is stop the boats[/caption]
And we hand over masses of our personal data to Apple, Meta and others, and trust them to keep it secure.
So far so good, then, for the Government’s plan to tackle illegal working by forcing all British adults to get a digital ID.
Yet HUGE doubts remain.
The first is the utter, chronic incompetence of the British State.
Its track record for managing big IT projects is a disgrace. You name it, our hapless WFH Civil Service will find a way to botch it.
Government also has a long and disturbing record of LOSING the public’s personal data or falling prey to cyber attacks.
Imagine how devastating it would be if the entire digital ID database — containing sensitive details about every one of us — fell into criminal or even enemy hands, or was left paralysed?
Disinterred from the grave of New Labour
For a small glimpse into the mayhem you could expect, take a look at what happened with the mistaken release of the list of Afghans who had helped UK troops, or the time Gordon Brown’s Government lost 25MILLION child benefit records.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing to stop unscrupulous employers simply ignoring the new regime, given the Home Office’s pathetic inability to enforce any kind of rules on immigration.
Businesses are already obliged to carry out paper checks on a person’s right to work in the UK. Many simply don’t bother — safe in the knowledge the chances of being caught are tiny.
A backstreet car wash or sweatshop staffed by dinghy migrants is no more likely to be put off by the Prime Minister’s so-called “Brit card”.
Plenty of European countries — France included — have both digital ID AND booming black markets.
As a deterrent, there’s no conclusive proof that it’s going to work.
It might well be that Sir Keir Starmer — smashed around by scandal, resignations and the plot to replace him with Andy Burnham — just wants something new to talk about.
After all, ID cards weren’t in the Labour manifesto. He’s just disinterred them from the grave of New Labour on the eve of what promises to be a fractious Labour Party Conference.
The PM has no mandate for forcing this plan upon the country.
What he was elected to do is stop the boats.
How about getting on with that — starting with a PROPER deterrent like Rwanda?
