David Blunkett is trying to resuscitate his identity card system; we’ve been here before.

Identity cards have become a hot topic in the UK due to the upcoming elections and their focus on migration. 

We’ve been here before.  Once again, we must resist plans to turn us into walking barcodes.

Earlier this month, Labour Party peer Lord David Blunkett, who was forced to resign from two positions in Tony Blair’s government due to his involvement in scandals, called for reintroducing national identity (“ID”) cards, arguing that it could be the country’s solution for unchecked immigration and human trafficking.

“Identity cards are a simple, practical and affordable answer, one that would shatter the business model of organised international gangs making billions from human trafficking,” Lord Blunkett wrote in an opinion piece in The Daily Mail on 2 April.

Identity cards are a contentious issue in British politics, with different opinions being held by various parties. Lord Blunkett’s assertion that migrants would be deterred from coming to the UK if they were unable to work or claim benefits without an identity card was contradicted by his own political party.

“There are already ID requirements for foreign citizens living or working in the UK. But the problem is there are no proper checks or enforcement to prevent illegal working and exploitation,” a Labour Party spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph.

During the early 2000s, the UK government attempted to introduce identity cards and many of the arguments recently presented by Lord Blunkett are the same as those highlighted back then.

As the home secretary under Prime Minister Tony Blair, Blunkett proposed compulsory identity cards as a solution for various issues, including illegal migration, benefit fraud, identity theft and the threat of terrorism after 9/11.

As Peter Hitchens wrote in the Daily Mail, Lord Blunkett is as wrong now as he was 20 years ago when he tried to introduce identity cards, a supposed cure-all for our problems whose supporters never think very hard about the subject.

For certain, they were less than no use at all when they were imposed on this country at the outbreak of World War Two in September 1939.

I have combed the archives for any evidence that they ever helped uncover a spy ring or anything of that kind.

Though you will not be surprised to learn that a black market in stolen cards quickly sprang up, or that half a million people managed to lose theirs in the first two years of the war.

They would, of course, have been very useful to the Nazis, had they ever arrived, in rounding up Jews and other persons they wanted to kill.

After Lord Blunkett’s passionate call for ID cards to combat illegal migration, a robust response from PETER HITCHENS … Identity cards are just a Bullying Licence for Busybodies – and won’t stop the boats, Daily Mail, 3 April 2024

Some political commentators speculate that ID cards could divide the government during the upcoming general elections.

Opponents have been warning against an identity card system for decades, and for good reason. 

For example, in 2007, the civil rights group Liberty argued that identity cards are a pathway to less privacy and greater surveillance – a notion that was fuelled by the plan to build a biometric database of UK citizens called the National Identification Register.

The UK government, headed by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, finally repealed the law governing the identity scheme in 2010 and closed down the biometric database in 2011. The project was dubbed “wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive.”

But Labour politicians have kept the identity cards scheme alive.  Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock argued in late 2022 that it would assure control over borders. The Tony Blair Institute, which backs digital identification development across the globe, has also expressed support for the project.

In the video below, Big Brother Watch summarises where Lord Blunkett’s resuscitated push for his failed identity cards scheme would lead and why we must resist his plans.

“Lord Blunkett’s plan is clearly an attempt to keep tabs on the entire population and would turn us into walking barcodes,” the video explains.

Big Brother Watch: Digital ID to “Stop the Boats”? 12 April 2024 (4 mins)

Sources for this article include: The UK’s election may spell out the future of its national ID cards, Biometric Update, 14 April 2024

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