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"Thousands have registered interest" in ID cards, says Identity & Passport Service
10 September, 2009
Roll-out of £30 cards to commence later this year in Manchester
Several thousand people have expressed interest in buying one of the government’s non-compulsory ID cards, according to the department responsible for their introduction.
The figure was revealed by James Hall, chief executive of the Identity & Passport Service, who said a staged roll-out of the cards would start in Manchester later this year, before being expanded across the North West in the early part of 2010.
Identity cards, which will cost £30 each, would be primarily aimed at young adults, the population group consistently asked to prove their ages in places such as pubs, Hall said.
Cards would not replace the passport or the driving licence as methods of identification, but would supplement them, he said.
“The passport will remain the gold standard, but it is not convenient and can easily be lost, while people are nervous about using their driving licence because it includes their home address,” he added.
The government was aware of alternative card schemes, such as PASS, but felt there were “multiplicity issues” and the ID card offered the best single form of age proof, he noted.
Many licensees do not believe the cards will offer them the protection from under-age drinkers trying to buy alcohol - which the government says backs the argument for issuing them.
While fraudulent cards are a major headache for pubs, Hall said the government had gone to “a considerable amount of trouble” to prevent forgery from taking place, in part through the use of biometric fingerprint technology.
However it would be some time before pubs had the machinery to monitor this aspect and in the meantime licensees should check that the bearer matches the photo on the card, he added.
Businesses can access an ID card information pack at www.businesslink.gov.uk/idsmart from September 24, 2009, when a major promotional campaign around the cards will also be launched.
Readers' comments
Didn't realise there were that many Sun readers. Ken Nason
Actually this scheme has little to do with the EU. Sure it has the same centralising, bureaucratic & authoritarian flavour as most of the rubbish shipped over here from Brussels, but in fact it is entirely home grown, I'm sad to say. There's also very little chance of them admitting that the whole thing is a misconceived fiasco because that would mean admitting that they were wrong. It wouldn't matter what we were talking about, or what the evidence might be, NeoLabour and others of their ilk will NEVER admit that they were wrong. They have well and truly painted themselves into an ID card based corner here. The Policy is that ID cards and the database state are a jolly good idea. End of. No justifications, just that it is a jolly good plan. So, that being The Policy and therefore The Truth (note capitalisations); The Truth cannot be gainsaid. Anyone who denies The Truth is Wrong on the deepest and most basic level, in their eyes. If you think this sounds very much like religious conviction then you're not too far out. Hence, no matter how much it is going to cost us in money and liberty, no matter who speaks against it, security experts, former heads of MI?, whoever; "NeoLabour scraps ID cards" is a headline we are NEVER EVER going to see.
Can we change the headline to say "99% of people have no interest whatsoever in having ID cards"?
So, several thousand people in the city of Manchester have expressed an interest in obtaining one of Nu Labour's EU-compliant National Identity cards. Considering there are over 2.5 million people who live in Manchester, this hardly represents overwhelming public support for the scheme, less than 0.1 per cent in fact. Perhaps the smart-cookie Mancunians have already worked out that it's hardly worth getting this card, as it's sure to be scrapped by an incoming Conservative government in the near future. But why are they neded exactly? It is said that 85% of the UK population already has a driving licence, a Passport or both. Why is this government proposing to waste Billions of pounds on producing yet another card for us to carry about, yet another government database, yet another set of beurocracy? Public debt levels here in the UK already top the trillion pound mark and large scale cuts in public expenditure are just around the corner. Surely this EU inspired project should be the first one to be ditched since it has so little real value to deliver.