Identity, Entitlement and Immigration

French Identity Card

 

British Identity Card

Finnish all-in-one Identity Card

Typical UK commercial Identity Card

Almost everyone in the UK has a wallet or purse full of cards, or maybe these are now contained on their mobile phones. We seem to accept that our details can be captured by banks, retailers, travel companies, insurers, clubs, charities and betting companies. For the most part, our personal information is protected but there are spillages such as the one from TalkTalk where 4 million customers had to be informed that their personal information may have been compromised. It is also fairly apparent from rogue emails that quite a few retailers and companies are happy to sell our data to others. Facebook is the best example but with so many transient companies there must be an active trade in selling our details and it is not always easy to despatch persistent intrusive company emails to the trash bin.

Meanwhile, in the UK the government has an aversion to issuing a generic digital identity card. We have to go back to the years after World War 2 to find a British Identity Card, it was very necessary to collect the weekly rations including orange juice and cod liver oil for the post-war baby boomers. Although we have a driving license and a passport, they are requirements that entitle us to drive and travel and are necessary to access more enlightened countries. 

Identity cards are far more liberating than this, there are other entitlements like education, health care, bus or train travel, usage of local facilities such as libraries, sports centres and local or age-related discounts that can be included in an entitlement identity card. Identity Cards are now universal in almost all European countries. 28 countries in the European Economic Area have introduced digital-identity-id-cards that are card readable. Only the UK, Denmark and Iceland have refrained from issuing identity cards, Across the world, there are 70 nations in a similar position and this is increasing rapidly as their benefits become essential in the digital age. The UK government merely sees identity cards as a loss of freedom and goes to inordinate lengths to devise alternative schemes that are both less comprehensive, expensive and seldom very effective. Witness the test and trace application.

This new generation of computerized national identity cards provides the best identity theft protection. They also enable governments to implement online applications such as eGovernment solutions giving citizens access to public services with the reassurance of robust security.​​​ These government-issued IDs mean a single card is able to offer a wide range of services from acting as a driver's license, enabling the user to file their taxes, confirming voting rights and giving access to employment and state benefits.

The UK could have been in the vanguard of countries developing smart national identity cards. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, proposed a British Identity Card and a National Identity Register (NIR) that would hold biometric information such as fingerprints, a face scan and iris scan that would be indexed to other databases such as a resident's address register. After much debate, the UK government passed The National Identity Card Act 2006 to introduce such a card and NIR, this also stressed its importance as an entitlement card. This would have simplified and made secure many transactions with local and national governments as well the NHS and other government agencies. 

During its introduction, there were some concerns and amendments were made as the proposals were developed. Cards became available on a voluntary basis in 2008 for foreign nationals and for UK citizens in 2009. They would also replace passports and act as ID cards for young people to prove their age. Opposition from the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives as well as human rights groups and security experts continued after their introduction. It led the new Conservative/ Liberal Democratic Coalition government in 2010 to scrap identity cards and the NIR as one of their first acts. Austerity, Brexit and a failure to introduce ID Cards should be bracketed together as the major follies that have damaged public services and reduced the life chances of far too many UK citizens. They also explain why, along with our incompetent and disrespectful ministers, the UK has lost any respect in its dealings with other nations.

In Scotland, there was parallel progress in developing an entitlement card and it was ready to roll by 2007. It had a strong emphasis on linking a register of citizens with a unique property register in order to provide better information sharing between key services such as Education, Social Work, Health and Police. This was considered vital to protect vulnerable children and the elderly. However, the new Scottish Government rejected these proposals when the SNP. Conservatives and Liberal Democrats all voted against the proposals in 2008.

Asylum Seekers

Nowhere is the damage to the UK's reputation more apparent than in the scandal of the lost lives of asylum seekers as they strive to rejoin families or claim asylum in the UK by crossing the Channel from France. It is not that the UK has many asylum seekers compared to most European countries. In 2020, Germany had the highest number of asylum applicants in the EU (122,015 applicants), while France had 93,475 applicants. The UK received the 5th largest number of applicants (36,041) when compared with countries in the EU ( 7% of the total). This represents the 17th largest intake when measured per head of population, according to UN Refugee Agency.

Many migrants choose to make an asylum claim in the first country they arrive in - such as Greece or Turkey - and only a minority choose to travel on to the UK. At the end of 2020, Turkey hosted some 3.65 million Syrians under temporary protection (90.6% of the total refugee population) and 322,000 international protection applicants, mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.

By the end of February 2021, the UK had resettled 20,319 refugees from Syria under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme. The overall number of arrivals is still relatively modest, certainly when compared with the number 20 years ago, when UK asylum applications reached 84,132. Nevertheless, the numbers attempting to cross the English Channel have increased dramatically. More than 23,000 people have arrived in the UK this year in small boats, almost three times 2020’s total of about 8,500.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, claims that 70% of small boat arrivals “are not genuine asylum seekers”. This is contrary to the Home Office data shows that nearly two-thirds of people who cross the Channel in small boats are judged to be genuine refugees.  Eventually after inordinate delays they are allowed to remain but not allowed to work. Without some form of identification card system, there would be no way of ensuring their whereabouts or their entitlements which is the norm in most other developed countries.

The government's claim that the UK is a popular destination with strong ‘pull factors’ for asylum seekers and economic migrants is misleading, an unedifying attempt to justify its harsh policies to reduce the UK's obligations to asylum seekers. People who are fleeing persecution or conflict don’t need any further incentive to look for safety. Previous Home Office research into asylum seekers’ decision-making appears to undermine the pull factor argument for harsher policies. It says: “Asylum seekers are guided more by agents, the presence or absence of family and friends, language, and perceived cultural affinities than by scrutiny of asylum policies or rational evaluation of the welfare benefits on offer.”

In this respect, the French, who take almost three times as many asylum seekers as the UK, are correct when they argue that it is the UK, by preventing flights and ferry entry to the UK, that is the root of the problem. They also point out that the absence of identity cards in the UK makes it more likely that there is a chance to find jobs and live illegally in the UK. It is a country that fails to keep a register of its citizens, a digital identity, for protecting the right to work, keeping a record of Covid vaccinations, for services or voting or to provide the entitlements that the mother of parliaments likes to pretend to exist. C'est la vie en Angleterre.